MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 



MASTERS OF THE:^ 
ENGLISH NOVEL 



A STUDY OF 
PRINCIPLES AND PERSONALITIES 



BY 



RICHARD BURTON 




NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1909 




Copyright, 1909, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

Published October, 1909 



@!i^.*r H^l 



4 8101 



SEP 28 1909 



r.» h 



PREFACE 

The principle of inclusion in this book is the tra- 
ditional one which assumes that criticism is only 
safe when it deals with authors who are dead. In 
proportion as we approach the living or, worse, 
speak of those still on earth, the proper perspective 
is lost and the dangers of contemporary judgment 
incurred. The light-minded might add, that the 
dead cannot strike back; to pass judgment upon 
them is not only more critical but safer. 

Sometimes, however, the distinction between the 
living and the dead is an invidious one. Three 
authors hereinafter studied are examples: Meredith, 
Hardy and Stevenson. Hardy alone is now in the 
land of the living, Meredith having but just passed 
away. Yet to omit the former, while including the 
other two, is obviously arbitrary, since his work in 
fiction is as truly done as if he, like them, rested from 
his literary labors and the gravestone chronicled his 
day of death. For reasons best known to himself, 
Mr. Hardy seems to have chosen verse for the final 
expression of his personality. It is more than a 
decade since he published a novel. So far as age 
goes, he is the senior of Stevenson : " Desperate 
Remedies " appeared when the latter was a stripling 



vi PREFACE 

at the University of Edinburgh. Hardy is there- 
fore included in the survey. I am fully aware that 
to strive to measure the accomplishment of those 
practically contemporary, whether it be Meredith 
and Hardy or James and Howells, is but more or 
less intelligent guess-work. Nevertheless, it is pleas- 
ant employ, the more interesting, perhaps, to the 
critic and his readers because an element of un- 
certainty creeps into what is said. If the critic runs 
the risk of Je suis, J'y reste, he gets his reward 
in the thrill of prophecy; and should he turn out a 
false prophet, he is consoled by the reflection that 
it will place him in a large and enjoyable company. 

Throughout the discussion it has been the inten- 
tion to keep steadily before the reader the two main 
ways of looking at life in fiction, which have led to 
the so-called realistic and romantic movements. No 
fear of repetition in the study of the respective 
novelists has kept me from illustrating from many 
points of view and taking advantage of the oppor- 
tunity offered by each author, the distinction thus 
set up. For back of all stale jugglery of terms, 
lies a very real and permanent difference. The words 
denote different types of mind as well as of art: and 
express also a changed interpretation of the world of 
men, resulting from the social and intellectual revo- 
lution since 1750. 

No apology would appear to be necessary for 
Chapter Seven, which devotes sufiicient space to the 



PREFACE vii 

French influence to show how it affected the realistic 
tendency of all modern novel-making. The Scandi- 
navian lands, Germany, Italy, England and Spain, 
all have felt the leadership of France in this regard 
and hence any attempt to sketch the history of the 
Novel on English soil, would ignore causes, that did 
not acknowledge the Gallic debt. 

It may also be remarked that the method em- 
ployed in the following pages necessarily excludes 
many figures of no slight importance in the evolu- 
tion of English fiction. There are books a-plenty 
dealing with these secondary personalities, often 
significant as links in the chain and worthy of study 
were the purpose to present the complete history of 
the Novel. By centering upon indubitable masters, 
the principles illustrated both by the lesser and 
larger writers will, it is hoped, be brought home with 
equal if not* greater force. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Fiction and the Novel 1 

II. Eighteenth Century Beginnings: Richardson 23 

III. Eighteenth Century Beginnings: Fielding . 48 

IV. Developments: Smollett, Sterne and Others . 73 
V. Realism: Jane Austen 103 

VI. Modern Romanticism: Scott . . . . . 133 

VII. French Influence 150 

VIII. Dickens 175 

IX. Thackeray 195 

X. George Eliot 218 

XI. Trollope and Others 344 

XII. Hardy and Meredith 363 

XIII. Stevenson 299 

XIV. The American Contributigit 313 

Index 333 



MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH 
NOVEL 

CHAPTER I 
FICTION AND THE NOVEL 

All the world loves a story as it does a lover. 
It is small wonder then that stories have been 
told since man walked erect and long before 
transmitted records. Fiction, a conveniently broad 
term to cover all manner of story-telling, is a hoary 
thing and within historical limits we can but get 
a glimpse of its activity. Because it is so diverse 
a thing, it may be regarded in various ways : as a 
literary form, a social manifestation, a comment 
upon life. Main emphasis in this book is placed 
upon its recent development on English soil under 
the more restrictive name of Novel; and it is the 
intention, in tracing the work of representative 
novel writers, to show how the Novel has become 
in some sort a special modern mode of expression 
and of opinion, truly reflective of the Zeitgeist. 

The social and human element in a literary phe- 
nomenon is what gives general interest and includes 
it as part of the culturgeschichte of a people. This 

1 



2 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

interest is as far removed from that of the literary 
specialist taken up with questions of morphology and 
method, as it is from the unthinking rapture of the 
boarding-school Miss who finds a current book " per- 
fectly lovely," and skips intrepidly to the last page 
to see how it is coming out. Thoughtful people 
are coming to feel that fiction is only frivolous when 
the reader brings a frivolous mind or makes a frivo- 
lous choice. While it will always be legitimate to 
turn to fiction for innocent amusement, since the 
peculiar property of all art is to give pleasure, 
the -day has been reached when it is recognized as 
part of our culture to read good fiction, to realize 
the value and importance of the Novel in modern 
education; and conversely, to reprimand the older, 
narrow notion that the habit means self-indulgence 
and a waste of time. Nor can we close our eyes to 
the tyrannous domination of fiction to-day, for good 
or bad. It has worn seven-league boots of progress 
the past generation. So early as 1862, Sainte-Beuve 
declared in conversation : " Everything is being grad- 
ually merged into the novel. There is such a vast 
scope and the form lends itself to everything." 
Prophetic words, more than fulfilled since they were 
spoken. 

Of the three main ways of story-telling, by the 
epic poem, the drama and prose fiction, the epic 
seems to be the oldest; poetry, indeed, being the 
natural form of expression among primitive peoples. 



FICTION AND THE NOVEL 3 

The comparative study of literature shows that so 
far as written records go, we may not surely ascribe 
precedence in time either to fiction or the drama. 
The testimony varies in different nations. But if 
the name fiction be allowed for a Biblical narrative 
like the Book of Ruth, which in the sense of imagina- 
tive and literary handling of historical material it 
certainly is, the great antiquity of the form may 
be conceded. Long before the written or printed 
word, we may safely say, stories were recited in 
Oriental deserts, yarns were spun as ships heaved 
over the seas, and sagas spoken beside hearth fires 
far in the frozen north. Prose narratives, epic in 
theme or of more local import, were handed doAvn from 
father to son, transmitted from family to family, 
through the exercise of a faculty of memory that 
now, in a day when labor-saving devices have almost 
atrophied its use, seems well nigh miraculous. 
Prose story-telling, which allows of ample descrip- 
tion, elbow room for digression, indefinite extension 
and variation from the original kernel of plot, lends 
itself admirably to the imaginative needs of human- 
ity early or late. 

With the English race, fiction began to take con- 
structural shape and definiteness of purpose in Eliz- 
abethan days. Up to the sixteenth century the 
tales were either told in verse, in the epic form of 
Beowulf or in the shrunken epic of a thirteenth cen- 
tury ballad like " King Horn " ; in the verse narra- 



4 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

tives of Chaucer or the poetic musings of Spenser. 
Or else they were a portion of that prose romance 
of chivalry which was vastly cultivated in the middle 
ages, especially in France and Spain, and of which 
we have a doughty exemplar in the Morte D'Arthur, 
which dates nearly a century before Shakspere's 
day. Loose construction and no attempt to deal 
with the close eye of observation, characterize these 
earlier romances, which were in the main conglomer- 
ates of story using the double appeal of love and 
war. 

But at a time when the drama was paramount in 
popularity, when the young Shakspere was writing 
his early comedies, fiction, which was in the fulness 
of time to conquer the play form as a popular 
vehicle of story-telling, began to rear its head. The 
loosely constructed, rambling prose romances of 
Lyly of euphuistic fame, the prose pastorals of 
Lodge from which model Shakspere made his for- 
est drama, " As You Like It," the picaresque, harum- 
scarum story of adventure, " Jack Wilton," the pro- 
totype of later books like " Gil Bias " and " Robin- 
son Crusoe," — these were the early attempts to give 
prose narration a closer knitting, a more organic 
form. 

But all such tentative striving was only prepara- 
tion; fiction in the sense of more or less formless 
prose narration, was written for about two centuries 
without the production of what may be called the 



FICTION AND THE NOVEL 5 

Novel in the modern meaning of the word. The 
broader name fiction may properly be applied, since, 
as we shall see, all novels are fiction, but all fiction 
is by no means Novels. The whole development of 
the Novel, indeed, is embraced within little more 
than a century and a half; from the middle of the 
eighteenth century to the present time. The term 
Novel is more definite, more specific than the fiction 
out of which it evolved; therefore, we must ask our- 
selves wherein lies the essential difference. Light is 
thrown by the early use of the word in critical ref- 
erence in English. In reading the following from 
Steele's " Tender Husband," we are made to realize 
that the stark meaning of the term implies some- 
thing new : social interest, a sense of social solidarity : 
" Our amours can't furnish out a Romance ; they'll 
make a very pretty Novel." 

This clearly marks a distinction: it gives a hint 
as to the departure made by Richardson in 1742, 
when he published " Pamela." It is not strictly the 
earliest discrimination between the Novel and the 
older romance; for the dramatist Congreve at the 
close of the seventeenth century shows his knowledge 
of the distinction. And, indeed, there are hints of 
it in Elizabethan criticism of such early attempts as 
those of Lyly, Nast, Lodge and others. Moreover, 
the student of criticism as it deals with the Novel 
must also expect to meet with a later confusion of 
nomenclature; the word being loosely applied to any 



6 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

type of prose fiction in contrast with the short story 
or tale. But here, at an early date, the severance 
is plainly indicated between the study of contempo- 
rary society and the elder romance of heroism, super- 
naturalism, and improbability. It is a difference 
not so much of theme as of view-point, method and 
intention. 

For underlying this attempt to come closer to 
humanity through the medium of a form of fiction, 
is to be detected an added interest in personality for 
its own sake. During the eighteenth century, com- 
monly described as the Teacup Times, an age of 
powder and patches, of etiquette, epigram and sur- 
face polish, there developed a keener sense of the 
value of the individual, of the sanctity of the ego, 
a faint prelude to the note that was to become so 
resonant in the nineteenth century, sounding through 
all the activities of man. Various manifestations in 
the civilization of Queen Anne and the first Georges 
illustrate the new tendency. 

One such is the coffee house, prototype of the 
bewildering club life of our own day. The eighteenth 
century coffee house, where the men of fashion and 
affairs foregathered to exchange social news over 
their glasses, was an organization naturally fostering 
altruism ; at least, it tended to cultivate a feeling for 
social relations. 

Again, the birth of the newspaper with the Spec- 
tator Papers in the early years of the century, is 



FICTION AND THE NOVEL 7 

another such sign of the times: the newspaper being 
one of the great social bonds of humanity, for good 
or bad, linking man to man, race to race in the 
common, well-nigh instantaneous nexus of sympathy. 
The influence of the press at the time of a San 
Francisco or Messina horror is apparent to all; but 
its eff^ect in furnishing the psychology of a business 
panic is perhaps no less potent though not so obvious. 
When Addison and Steele began their genial con- 
versations thrice a week with their fellow citizens, 
they little dreamed of the power they set a-going in 
the world ; for here was the genesis of modern journal- 
ism. And whatever its abuses and degradations, 
the fourth estate is certainly one of the very few 
widely operative educational forces to-day, and has 
played an important part in spreading the idea of 
the brotherhood of man. 

That the essay and its branch form, the character 
sketch, both found in the Spectator Papers, were 
contributory to the Novel's development, is sure. The 
essay set a new model for easy, colloquial speech: 
just the manner for fiction which was to report the 
accent of contemporary society in its average of 
utterance. And the sketch, seen in its delightful 
efflorescence in the Sir Roger De Coverly papers 
series by Addison, is fiction in a sense: differing 
therefrom in its slighter framework, and the aim 
of the writer, which first of all is the delicate de- 
lineation of personality, not plot and the study of 



8 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

the social complex. There is the absence of plot 
which is the natural outcome of such lack of story 
interest. A wide survey of the English essay from 
its inception with Bacon in the early seventeenth 
century will impress the inquirer with its fluid nature 
and natural outflow into full-fledged fiction. The 
essay has a way, as Taine says, of turning " spon- 
taneously to fiction and portraiture." And as it is 
difficult, in the light of evolution, to put the finger 
on the line separating man from the lower order of 
animal life, so is it difficult sometimes to say just 
where the essay stops and the Novel begins. There 
is perhaps no hard-and-fast line. 

Consider Dr. Holmes' " Autocrat of the Breakfast 
Table," for example; is it essay or fiction? There 
is a definite though slender story interest and idea, 
yet since the framework of story is really for the 
purpose of hanging thereon the genial essayist's 
dissertations on life, we may decide that the book 
is primarily essay, the most charmingly personal, 
egoistic of literary forms. The essay " slightly 
dramatized," Mr. Howells happily characterizes it. 
This form then must be reckoned with in the eigh- 
teenth century and borne in mind as contributory all 
along in the subsequent development, as we try to get 
a clear idea of the qualities which demark and limit 
the Novel. 

Again, the theater was an institution doing its 
share to knit social feeling; as indeed it had been 



FICTION AND THE NOVEL 9 

in Elizabethan days : offering a place where many 
might be moved by the one thought, the one emotion, 
personal variations being merged in what is now 
called mob psychology, a function for centuries also 
exercised by the Church. Nor should the function 
of the playhouse as a visiting-place be overlooked. 
So too the Novel came to express most inclusively 
among the literary forms this more vivid realization 
of meum and tuum; the worth of me and my in- 
tricate and inevitable relations to you, both of us 
caught in the coils of that organism dubbed society, 
and willingly, with no Rousseau-like desire to escape 
and set up for individualists. The Novel in its 
treatment of personality began to teach that the 
stone thrown into the water makes circles to the 
uttermost bounds of the lake; that the little rift 
within the lute makes the whole music mute; that 
we are all members of the one body. This germinal 
principle was at root a profoundly true and noble 
one; it serves to distinguish modern fiction philo- 
sophically from all that is earlier, and it led the late 
Sidney Lanier, in the well-known book on this sub- 
ject, to base the entire development upon the work- 
ing out of the idea of personality. The Novel seems 
to have been the special literary instrument in the 
eighteenth century for the propagation of altruism; 
here lies its deepest significance. It was a baptism 
which promised great things for the lusty young 
form. 



10 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

We are now ready for a fair working definition of 
the modern Novel. It means a study of contemporary 
society with an implied sympathetic interest, and, it 
may be added, with special reference to love as a 
motor force, simply because love it is which binds 
together human beings in their social relations. 

This aim sets off the Novel in contrast with past 
fiction which exhibits a free admixture of myth and 
marvel, of creatures human, demi-liuman and super- 
natural, with all time or no time for the enactment 
of its events. The modern story puts its note of 
emphasis upon character that is contemporary and 
average ; and thus makes a democratic appeal against 
that older appeal which, dealing with exceptional 
personages — kings, leaders, allegorical abstractions 
— is naturally aristocratic. 

There was something, it would appear, in the 
English genius which favored a form of literature — 
or modification of an existing form — allowing for 
a more truthful representation of society, a criticism 
(in the Arnoldian sense) of the passing show. The 
elder romance finds its romantic effect, as a rule, 
in the unusual, the strange and abnormal aspects 
of life, not so much seen of the eye as imagined 
of the mind or fancy. Hence, romance is historically 
contrasted with reality, with many unfortunate re- 
sults when we come to its modern applications. 
The issue has been a Babel-like mixture of terms. 

Or when the bizarre or supernatural was not the 



FICTION AND THE NOVEL 11 

basis of appeal, it was found in the sickly and ab- 
surd treatment of the amatory passion, quite as far 
removed from the every-day experience of normal 
human nature. It was this kind of literature, with 
the French La Calprenede as its high priest, 
which my Lord Chesterfield had in mind when he 
wrote to his son under date of 1752, Old Style: 
" It is most astonishing that there ever could have 
been a people idle enough to write such endless 
heaps of the same stuff. It was, however, the occu- 
pation of thousands in the last century; and is still 
the private though disavowed amusement of young 
girls and sentimental ladies." The chief trait of 
these earlier fictions, besides their mawkishness, is 
their almost incredible long-windedness ; they have 
the long breath, as the French say ; and it may be 
confessed that the great, pioneer eighteenth century 
novels, foremost those of Richardson, possess a 
leisureliness of movement which is an inheritance of 
the romantic past when men, both fiction writers 
and readers, seem to have Time; they look back to 
Lyly, and forward (since history repeats itself here), 
to Henry James. Tlie condensed, breathless fiction 
of a Kipling is the more logical evolution. 

Certainly, the English were innovators in this field, 
exercising a direct and potent influence upon foreign 
fiction, especially that of France and Germany; it 
is not too much to say, that the novels of Rich- 
ardson and Fielding, pioneers, founders of the Eng- 



12 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

lish Novel, offered Europe a type. If one reads the 
French fictionists before Richardson — Madame de 
La Fayette, Le Sage, Prevost and Rousseau — one 
speedily discovers that they did not write novels 
in the modern sense; the last named took a cue 
from Richardson, to be sure, in his handling of 
sentiment, but remained an essayist, nevertheless. 
And the greater Goethe also felt and acknowledged 
the Englishman's example. Testimonies from the 
story-makers of other lands are frequent to the 
effect upon them of these English pioneers of fiction. 
It will be seen from this brief statement of the 
kind of fiction essayed by the founders of the Novel, 
that their tendency was towards what has come to 
be called " realism " in modern fiction literature. 
One uses this sadly overworked term with a certain 
sinking of the heart, yet it seems unavoidable. The 
very fact that the words " realism " and " romance " 
have become so hackne3^ed in critical parlance, makes 
it sure that they indicate a genuine distinction. As 
the Novel has developed, ramified and taken on a 
hundred guises of manifestation, and as criticism 
has striven to keep pace with such a growth, it is 
not strange that a confusion of nomenclature should 
have arisen. But underneath whatever misunder- 
standings, the original distinction is clear enough 
and useful to make: the modern Novel in its be- 
ginning did introduce a more truthful representation 
of human life than had obtained in the romantic 



FICTION AND THE NOVEL 13 

fiction deriving from the medieval stories. The 
term " realism " as first applied was suitably de- 
scriptive ; it is only with the subsequent evolution 
that so simple a word has taken on subtler shades 
and esoteric implications. 

It may be roundly asserted that from the first 
the English Novel has stood for truth; that it has 
grown on the whole more truthful with each genera- 
tion, as our conception of truth in literature has 
been widened and become a nobler one. The obliga- 
tion of literature to report life has been felt with 
increasing sensitiveness. In the particulars of ap- 
pearance, speech, setting and action the characters 
of English fiction to-day produce a semblance of 
life which adds tenfold to its power. To compare 
the dialogue of modern masters like Hardy, Steven- 
son, Kipling and Howells with the best of the earlier 
writers serves to bring the assertion home ; the differ- 
ence is immense; it is the difference between the 
idiom of life and the false-literary tone of imitations 
of life which, with all their merits, are still self- 
conscious and inapt. And as the earlier idiom was 
imperfect, so was the psychology; the study of 
motives in relation to action has grown steadily 
broader, more penetrating; the rich complexity of 
human beings has been recognized more and more, 
where of old the simple assumption that all mankind 
falls into the two great contrasted groups of the 
good and the bad, was quite sufficient. And, as a 



14 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

natural outcome of such an easy-going philosophy, 
the study of life was rudimentary and partial; you 
could always tell how the villain would jump and 
were comfortable in the assurance that the curtain 
should ring down upon " and so they were married 
and lived happily ever afterwards." 

In contrast, to-day human nature is depicted in 
the Novel as a curious compound of contradictory 
impulses and passions, and instead of the clear-cut 
separation of the sheep and the goats, we look forth 
upon a vast, indiscriminate horde of humanity whose 
color, broadly sui^eyed, seems a very neutral gray, 
— neither deep black nor shining white. The white- 
robed saint is banished along with the devil incar- 
nate; those who respect their art would relegate 
such crudities to Bowery melodrama. And while 
we may allow an excess of zeal in this matter, even 
a confusion of values, there can be no question that 
an added dignity has come to the Novel in these 
latter days, because it has striven with so much 
seriousness of purpose to depict life in a more in- 
terpretative way. It has seized for a motto the 
Veritas nos liberavit of the ancient philosopher. 
The elementary psychology of the past has been 
transferred to the stage drama, justifying Mr. 
Shaw's description of it as " the last sanctuary of 
unreality." And even in the theater, the truth de- 
manded in fiction for more than a century, is fast 
finding a place, and play-making, sensitive to the 



FICTION AND THE NOVEL 15 

new desire, is changing in this respect before our 
eyes. 

However, with the good has come evil too. In 
the modern seeking for so-called truth, the nuda 
Veritas has in some hands become shameless as well, — 
a fact amply illustrated in the following treatment 
of principles and personalities. 

The Novel in the hands of these eighteenth century 
writers also struck a note of the democratic, — a note 
that has sounded ever louder until the present day, 
when fiction is by far the most democratic of the 
literary forms (unless we now must include the 
drama in such a designation). The democratic ideal 
has become at once an instinct, a principle and a 
fashion. Richardson in his " Pamela " did a revo- 
lutionary thing in making a kitchen wench his hero- 
ine; English fiction had previously assumed that for 
its polite audience only the fortunes of Algernon 
and Angelina could be followed decorously and give 
fit pleasure. His innovation, symptomatic of the time, 
by no means pleased an aristocratic on-looker like 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who wrote to a 
friend : " The confounding of all ranks and making 
a jest of order has long been growing in England; 
and I perceive by the books you sent me, has made 
a very considerable progress. The heroes and hero- 
ines of the age are cobblers and kitchen wenches. 
Perhaps you will say, I should not take my ideas 
of the manners of the times from such trifling 



16 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

authors; but It is more truly to be found among 
them, than from any historian; as they write merely 
to get money, they always fall into the notions that 
are most acceptable to the present taste. It has 
long been the endeavor of our English writers to 
represent people of quality as the vilest and silliest 
part of the nation, being (generally) very low-born 
themselves " — a quotation deliciously commingled of 
prejudice and worldly wisdom. 

But Richardson, who began his career by writing 
amatory epistles for serving maids, realized (and 
showed his genius thereby), that if the hard fortunes 
and eventful triumph of the humble Pamela could 
but be sympathetically portrayed, the interest on 
the part of his aristocratic audience was certain to 
follow, — as the sequel proved. 

He knew that because Pamela was a human being 
she might therefore be made interesting ; he adopted, 
albeit unconsciously, the Terentian motto that noth- 
ing human should be alien from the interests of his 
readers. And as the Novel developed, this interest 
not only increased in intensity, but ever spread until 
it depicted with truth and sympathy all sorts and 
conditions of men. The typical novelist to-day pre- 
fers to leave the beaten highway and go into the 
by-ways for his characters ; his interest is with the 
humble of the earth, the outcast and alien, the under 
dog in the social struggle. It has become well-nigh 
a fashion, a fad, to deal with these picturesque and 



FICTION AND THE NOVEL 17 

once unexploited elements of the human passion- 
play. 

This interest does not stop even at man ; influenced 
by modern conceptions of life, it overleaps the line 
of old supposed to be impassable, and now includes 
the lower order of living things : animals have come 
into their own and a Kipling or a London gives us 
the psychology of brutekind as it has never been 
drawn before — from the view-point of the animal 
himself. Our little brothers of the air, the forest 
and the field are depicted in such wise that the world 
returns to a feeling which swelled the heart of St. 
Francis centuries ago, as he looked upon the birds 
he loved and thus addressed them: 

" And he entered the field and began to preach 
to the birds which were on the ground ; and suddenly 
those which were in the trees came to him and as 
many as there were they all stood quietly until Saint 
Francis had done preaching; and even then they did 
not depart until such time as he had given them 
his blessing; and St. Francis, moving among them, 
touched them with his cape, but not one moved." 

It is because this modem form of fiction upon 
which we fix the name Novel to indicate its new 
features has seized the idea of personality, has stood 
for truth and grown ever more democratic, that it 
has attained to the immense power which marks 
it at the present time. It is justified by historical 
facts ; it has become that literary form most closely 



18 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

revealing the contours of life, most expressive of 
its average experience, most sympathetic to its heart- 
throb. The thought should prevent us from regard- 
ing it as merely the syllabub of the literary feast, a 
kind of after-dinner condiment. It is not necessary 
to assume the total depravit}^ of current taste, in 
order to account for the tyranny of this latest-born 
child of fiction. In the study of individual writers 
and developing schools and tendencies, it will be well 
to keep in mind these underlying principles of 
growth: personality, truth and democracy; a con- 
ception sure to provide the story-maker with a new 
function, a new ideal. The distinguished French 
critic Brunetiere has said : " The novelist in reality 
is nothing more than a witness whose evidence should 
rival that of the historian in precision and trust- 
worthiness. We look to him to teach us literally 
to see. We read his novels merely with a view to 
finding out in them those aspects of existence which 
escape us, owing to the very hurry and stir of life, 
an attitude we express by saying that for a novel 
to be recognized as such, it must offer an historical 
or documentary value, a value precise and deter- 
mined, particular and local, and as well, a general 
and lasting psychologic value or significance." 

It may be added, that while in the middle eighteenth 
century the novel-writing was tentative and hardly 
more than an avocation, at the end of the nineteenth, 
it had become a fine art and a profession. It did 



FICTION AND THE NOVEL 19 

not occur to Richardson, serious-minded man that 
he was, that he was formulating a new art canon 
for fiction. Indeed, the English author takes him- 
self less and less seriously as we go back in time. 
It was bad form to be literary when Voltaire visited 
Congreve and found a fine gentleman where he 
sought a writer of genius ; complaining therefore 
that fine gentlemen came cheap in Paris; what he 
wished to see was the creator of the great comedies. 
In the same fashion, we find Horace Walpole, who 
dabbled in letters all his days and made it really 
his chief interest, systematically underrating the pro- 
fessional writers of his da}^, to laud a brilliant ama- 
teur who like himself desired the plaudits of the 
game without obeying its exact rules. He looked 
askance at the fiction-makers Richardson and Field- 
ing, because they did not move in the polite circles 
frequented by himself. 

The same key is struck by lively Fanny Burney 
in reporting a meeting with a languishing lady of 
fashion who had perpetrated a piece of fiction with 
the alarming title of " The Mausoleum of Julia " : 
" My sister intends, said Lady Say and Sele, to 
print her Mausoleum, just for her own friends and 
acquaintances." 

"Yes.? said Lady Hawke, I have never printed 

yet." 

And a little later, the same spirit is exhibited by 
Jane Austen when Madame de Sevigne sought her: 



20 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

Miss Austen suppressed the story-maker, wishing 
to be taken first of all for what she was: a country 
gentlewoman of unexceptionable connections. Even 
Walter Scott and Byron plainly exhibit this dislike 
to be reckoned as paid writers, men whose support 
came by the pen. In short, literary professionalism 
reflected on gentility. We have changed all that 
with a vengeance and can hardly understand the 
earlier sentiment; but this change of attitude has 
carried with it inevitably the artistic advancement 
of modem fiction. For if anything is certain it is 
that only professional skill can be relied upon to 
perfect an art form. The amateur may possess gift, 
even genius ; but we must look to the professional 
for technique. 

One other influence, hardly less eff*ective in molding 
the Novel than those already touched upon, is found 
in the increasing importance of woman as a central 
factor in society; indeed, holding the key to the 
social situation. The drama of our time, in so fre- 
quently making woman the protagonist of the piece, 
testifies, as does fiction, to this significant fact: 
woman, in the social and economic readjustment that 
has come to her, or better, which she is still under- 
going, has become so much more dominant in her 
social relations, that any form of literature truth- 
fully mirroring the society of the modern world must 
regard her as of potent efficiency. And this is so 
quite apart from the consideration that women make 



FICTION AND THE NOVEL 21 

up to-day the novelist's largest audience, and that, 
moreover, the woman writer of fiction is in numbers 
and popularity a rival of men. 

It would scarcely be too much to see a unifying 
principle in the evolution of the modern Novel, in 
the fact that the first example in the literature was 
Pamela, the study of a woman, while in representa- 
tive latter-day studies like " Tess of the D'Urber- 
villes," "The House of Mirth," "Trilby" and 
" The Testing of Diana Mallory " we again have 
studies of women; the purpose alike in time past or 
present being to fix the attention upon a human 
being whose fate is sensitively, subtly operative for 
good or ill upon a society at large. It is no accident 
then, that woman is so often the central figure of 
fiction: it means more than that, love being the 
solar passion of the race, she naturally is involved. 
Rather does it mean fiction's recognition of her as 
the creature of the social biologist, exercising her 
ancient function amidst all the changes and shifting 
ideas of successive generations. Whatever her su- 
perficial changes under the urge of the time-spirit. 
Woman, to a thoughtful eye, sits like the Sphinx 
above the drifting sands, silent, secret, powerful and 
obscure, bent only on her great purposive errand 
whose end is the bringing forth of that Overman 
who shall rule the world. With her immense bio- 
logic mission, seemingly at war with her individual 
career, and destructive apparently of that emanci- 



22 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

pation which is the present dream of her champions, 
what a type, what a motive this for fiction, and in 
what a manifold and stimulating way is the Novel 
awakening to its high privilege to deal with such 
material. In this view, having these wider implica- 
tions in mind, the role of woman in fiction, so far 
from waning, is but just begun. 

This survey of historical facts and marshaling of 
a few important principles has prepared us, it may 
be hoped, for a clearer comprehension of the develop- 
mental details that follow. It is a complex growth, 
but one vastly interesting and, after all, explained by 
a few, great substructural principles: the belief in 
personality, democratic feeling, a love for truth in 
art, and a realization of the power of modern Woman. 
The Novel is thus an expression and epitome of the 
societ^^ which gave it birth. 



CHAPTER II 

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS: 
RICHARDSON 

There is some significance in the fact that Samuel 
Richardson, founder of the modern novel, was so 
squarely a middle-class citizen of London town. 
Since the form he founded was, as we have seen, 
democratic in its original motive and subsequent 
development, it was fitting that the first shaper of 
the form should have sympathies not too exclusively 
aristocratic: should have been willing to draw upon 
the backstairs history of the servants' hall for his 
first heroine. 

To be sure, Mr. Richardson had the not uncom- 
mon failing of the humble-born: he desired above all, 
and attempted too much, to depict the manners of 
the great ; he had naive aristocratical leanings which 
account for his uncertain tread when he would move 
with ease among the boudoirs of Mayfair. Never- 
theless, in the honest heart of him, as his earliest 
novel forever proves, he felt for the woes of those 
social underlings who, as we have long since learned, 
have their microcosm faithfully reflecting the greater 
world they serve, and he did his best work in that 

23 



24 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

intimate portrayal of the feminine heart, which is 
not of a class but typically human ; he knew Clarissa 
Harlowe quite as well as he did Pamela; both were 
of interest because they were women. That acute 
contemporary, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 
severely reprimands Richardson for his vulgar lapses 
in painting polite society and the high life he so im- 
perfectly knew; yet in the very breath that she con- 
demns " Clarissa Harlowe " as " most miserable 
stuff," confesses that " she was such an old fool as to 
weep over " it " like any milkmaid of sixteen over the 
ballad of the Lady's Fall " — the handsomest kind of 
a compliment under the circumstances. And with the 
same charming inconsistency, she declares on the ap- 
pearance of " Sir Charles Grandison " that she 
heartily despises Richardson, yet eagerly reads him — 
" nay, sobs over his works in the most scandalous 
manner." 

Richardson was the son of a carpenter and himself 
a respected printer, who by cannily marrying the 
daughter of the man to whom he was apprenticed, 
and by diligence in his vocation, rose to prosperity, 
so that by 1754 he became Master of The Stationers' 
Company and King's Printer, doing besides an ex- 
cellent printing business. 

As a boy he had relieved the dumb anguish of 
serving maids by the penning of their love letters ; 
he seemed to have a knack at this vicarious manner 
of love-making and when in the full maturity of 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS 25 

fifty years, certain London publishers requested him 
to write for them a narrative which might stand as 
a model letter writer from which country readers 
should know the right tone, his early practice stood 
him in good stead. Using the epistolary form into 
which he was to throw all his fiction, he produced 
" Pamela," the first novel of analysis, in contrast 
with the tale of adventure, of the English tongue. 
It is worth remarking that Richardson wrote this 
story at an age when many novelists have well-nigh 
completed their work; even as Defoe published his 
masterpiece, " Robinson Crusoe," at fifty-eight. But 
such forms as drama and fiction are the very ones 
where ripe maturity, a long and varied experience 
with the world and a trained hand in the technique of 
the craft, go for their full value. A study of the 
chronology of novel-making will show that more 
acknowledged masterpieces were written after forty 
than before. Beside the eighteenth century ex- 
amples one places George Eliot, who wrote no fiction 
until she had nearly reached the alleged dead-line 
of mental activity : Browning with his greatest poem, 
" The Ring and the Book," published in his forty- 
eighth year ; Du Maurier turning to fiction at sixty, 
and De Morgan still later. Fame came to Rich- 
ardson then late in life, and never man enjoyed it 
more. Ladies with literary leanings (and the kind 
is independent of periods) used to drop into his 
place beyond Temple Bar — for he was a bookseller 



26 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

as well as printer, and printed and sold his own 
wares — to finger his volumes and have a chat about 
poor Pamela or the naughty Lovelace or impeccable 
Grandison. For how, in sooth, could they keep away 
or avoid talking shop when they were bursting with 
the books just read? 

And much, too, did Richardson enjoy the pros- 
perity his stories, as well as other ventures, brought 
him, so that he might move out Hammersmith way 
where William Morris and Cobden Sanderson have 
lived in our day, and have a fine house wherein to 
receive those same lady callers, who came in increas- 
ing flocks to his impromptu court where sat the 
prim, cherub-faced, elderly little printer. It is all 
very quaint, like a Watteau painting or a bit of 
Dresden china, as we look back upon it through the 
time-mists of a century and a half. 

In spite of its slow movement, the monotony of 
the letter form and the terribly utilitarian nature 
of its morals, " Pamela " has the essentials of in- 
teresting fiction; its heroine is placed in a plausible 
situation, she is herself life-like and her struggles 
are narrated with a sympathetic insight into the 
human heart — or better, the female heart. The gist 
of a plot so simple can be stated in few words: 
Mr. B., the son of a lady who has benefited Pamela 
Andrews, a serving maid, tries to conquer her virtue 
while she resists all his attempts — including an ab- 
duction, Richardson's favorite device — and as a re- 



RICHARDSON 27 

ward of her chastity, he condescends to marry her, 
to her very great gratitude and delight. The Eng- 
lish Novel started out with a flourish of trumpets 
as to its moral purpose; latter-day criticism may 
take sides for or against the novel-with-a-purpose, 
but that Richardson justified his fiction writing upon 
moral grounds and upon those alone is shown in 
the descriptive title-page of the tale, too prolix to 
be often recalled and a good sample in its long- 
windedness of the past compared with the terse brev- 
ity of the present in this matter: "Published in 
order to cultivate the principles of virtue and re- 
ligion in the mind of youth of both sexes " ; the 
author of " Sanford and Merton " has here his lit- 
erary progenitor. The sub-title, " or Virtue Re- 
warded," also indicates the homiletic nature of the 
book. And since the one valid criticism against 
all didactic aims in story-telling is that it is dull, 
Richardson, it will be appreciated, ran a mighty 
risk. But this he was able to escape because of 
the genuine human interest of his tales and the 
skill he displayed with psychologic analysis rather 
than the march of events. The close-knit, organic 
development of the best of our modeiii fiction is 
lacking ; leisurely and lax seems the movement. Mod- 
ern editions of " Pamela " and " Clarissa Harlowe •' 
are in the way of vigorous cutting for purposes of 
condensation. Scott seems swift and brief when 
set beside Richardson. Yet the slow convolutions 



28 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

and involutions serve to acquaint us intimately with 
the characters ; dwelling with them longer, we come 
to know them better. 

It is a fault in the construction of the story that 
instead of making Pamela's successful marriage the 
natural climax and close of the work, the author 
effects it long before the novel is finished and then 
tries to hold the interest by telling of the honey- 
moon trip in Italy, her cool reception by her husband's 
family, involving various subterfuges and difficulties, 
and the gradual moral reform she was able to bring 
about in her spouse. It must be conceded to him 
that some capital scenes are the result of this post- 
hymeneal treatment; that, to illustrate, where the 
haughty sister of Pamela's husband calls on the 
woman she believes to be her husband's mistress. Yet 
there is an effect of anti-climax; the main excite- 
ment — getting Pamela honestly wedded — is over. 
But we must not forget the moral purpose: Mr. 
B.'s spiritual regeneration has to be portrayed be- 
fore our very eyes, he must be changed from a 
rake into a model husband ; and with Richardson, that 
means plenty of elbow-room. There is, too, some- 
thing prophetic in this giving of ample space to 
post-marital life; it paves the way for much latter- 
day probing of the marriage misery. 

The picture of Mr. B. and Pamela's attitude to- 
wards him is full of irony for the modern reader; 
here is a man who does all in his power to ruin her 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS 29 

and, finding her adamant, at last decides to do the 
next best thing — secure her by marriage. And in- 
stead of valuing him accordingly, Pamela, with a 
kind of spaniel-like fawning, accepts his august hand. 
It must be confessed that with Pamela (that is, with 
Richardson), virtue is a market commodity for sale 
to the highest bidder, and this scene of barter and 
sale is an all-unconscious revelation of the low stand- 
ard of sex ethics which obtained at the time. The 
suggestion by Sidney Lanier that the sub-title should 
be : " or Vice Rewarded," " since the rascal Mr. B. 
it is who gets the prize rather than Pamela," has 
its pertinency from our later and more enlightened 
^^ew. But such was the eighteenth century. The 
exposure of an earlier time is one of the benefits of 
literature, always a sort of ethical barometer of 
an age — all the more trustworthy in reporting spir- 
itual ideals because it has no intention of doing so. 
That Richardson succeeds in making Mr. B. tol- 
erable, not to say likable, is a proof of his power; 
that the reader really grows fond of his heroine — 
especially perhaps in her daughterly devotion to her 
humble family — speaks volumes for his grasp of hu- 
man nature and helps us to understand the effect 
of the story upon contemporaneous readers. That 
effect was indeed remarkable. Lady Mary, to quote 
her again, testifies that the book " met with very 
extraordinary (and I think undesei-A^ed) success. It 
has been translated into French and Italian; it was 



30 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

all the fashion at Paris and Versailles and is still 
the joy of the chambermaids of all nations." Again 
she writes, " it has been translated into more lan- 
guages than any modem performances I ever heard 
of." A French dramatic version of it under the 
same title appeared three years after the publica- 
tion of the novel and a little later Voltaire in his 
" Nanme " used the same motif. Lady Mary's ref- 
erence to chambermaids is significant; it points to 
the new sympathy on the part of the novelist and 
the consequent new audience which the modern Novel 
was to command ; literally, all classes and conditions 
of mankind were to become its patrons; and as one 
result, the author, gaining his hundreds of thou- 
sands of readers, was to free himself forever of 
the aristocratic Patron, at whose door once on a 
time, he very humbly and hungrily knelt for favor. 
To-day, the Patron is hydra-headed; demos rules in 
literature as in life. 

The sentimentality of this pioneer novel which 
now seems old-fashioned and even absurd, expressed 
Queen Anne's day. " Sensibility," as it was called, 
was a favorite idea in letters, much affected, and 
later a kind of cult. A generation after Pamela, 
in Mackenzie's " Man of Feeling," weeping is un- 
restrained in English fiction; the hero of that lach- 
rymose tale incurred all the dangers of influenza 
because of his inveterate tendency toward damp emo- 
tional effects; he was perpetually dissolving in 



RICHARDSON SI 

" showers of tears." In fact, our novelists down 
to the memory of living man gave way to their 
feelings with far more abandon than is true of 
the present repressive period. One who reads Dick- 
ens' " Nicholas Nickleby " with this in mind, will 
perhaps be surprised to find how often the hero 
frankly indulges his grief; he cries with a freedom 
that suggests a trait inherited from his mother of 
moist memory. No doubt, there was abuse of this 
" sensibility " in earlier fiction : but Richardson was 
comparatively innocuous in his practice, and Cole- 
ridge, having the whole sentimental tendency in view, 
seems rather too severe when he declared that " all 
the evil achieved by Hobbes and the whole school 
of materialists will appear inconsiderable if it be com- 
pared with the mischief effected and occasioned by 
the sentimental philosophy of Sterne and his numer- 
ous imitators." The same tendency had its vogue 
on both the English and French stage — the Comedie 
larmoyante of the latter being vastly affected in Lon- 
don and receiving in the next generation the good- 
natured satiric shafts of Goldsmith. It may be pos- 
sible that at the present time, when the stoicism of 
the Red Indian in inhibiting expression seems to be 
an Anglo-Saxon ideal, we have reacted too far from 
the gush and the fervor of our forefathers. In 
any case, to Richardson belongs whatever of merit 
there may be in first sounding the new sentimental 
note. 



32 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

Pope declared that " Pamela," was as good as 
twenty sermons — an innocently malignant remark, 
to be sure, which cuts both ways ! And plump, 
placid Mr. Richardson established warm epistolary 
relations with many excellent if too emotional ladies, 
who opened a correspondence with him concerning 
the conductment of this and the following novels 
and strove to deflect the course thereof to soothe their 
lacerated feelings. What novelist to-day would not 
appreciate an audience that would take him au grand 
serieux in this fashion ! What higher compliment 
than for your correspondent — and a lady at that — 
to state that in the way of ministering to her per- 
sonal comfort, Pamela must marry and Clarissa must 
not die ! Richardson carried on a voluminous letter- 
writing in life even as in literature, and the curled 
darlings of latter-day letters may well look to their 
laurels in recalling him. A certain Mme. Belfair, 
for example, desires to look upon the author of those 
wonderful tales, yet modestly shrinks from being seen 
herself. She therefore implores that he will walk 
at an hour named in St. James Park — and this is 
the novelist's reply: 

" I go through the Park once or twice a week to 
my little retirement; but I will for a week together 
be in it, every day three or four hours, till you tell 
me you have seen a person who answers to this 
description, namely, short — rather plump — fair wig, 
lightish cloth coat, all black besides ; one hand gen- 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS 33 

erally in his bosom, the other a cane in it, which 
he leans upon under the skirts of his coat; . . . 
looking directly fore-right as passers-by would im- 
agine, but observing all that stirs on either hand 
of him; hardly ever turning back; of a light brown 
complexion, smoothish faced and ruddy cheeked, look- 
ing about sixty-five ; a regular, even pace, a gray 
eye, sometimes lively — very lively if he have hope 
of seeing a lady whom he loves and honors ! " 

Such innocent philandering is delicious ; there is 
a flavor to it that presages the " Personals " in 
a New York newspaper. " Was ever lady in such 
humor wooed?" or shall we say it is the novelist, 
not the lady, who is besieged! 

" Pamela " ran through five editions within a year 
of its appearance, which was a conspicuous success 
in the days of an audience so limited when compared 
with the vast reading public of later times. The 
smug little bookseller must have been greatly pleased 
by the good fortune attending his first venture into 
a new field, especially since he essayed it so late in 
life and almost by accident. His motive had been in 
a sense practical; for his publishers had requested 
him to write a book " on the useful concerns of 
life " — and that he had done so, he might have 
learned any Sunday in church, for divines did not 
hesitate to say a kind word from the pulpit about 
so unexceptionable a work. 

One of the things Richardson had triumphantly 



34, MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

demonstrated by his first story was that a very 
slight texture of plot can suffice for a long, not 
to say too long, piece of fiction, if only a free hand 
be given the story-teller in the way of depicting the 
intuitions and emotions of human beings ; dealing 
with their mind states rather than, or quite as much 
as, their actions. This was the modern note, and 
very speedily was the lesson learned; the time was 
apt for it. From 174S, the date of " Pamela," to 
1765 is but a quarter century; yet within those 
narrow time-limits the English Novel, through the 
labors of Richardson and Fielding, Smollett, Sterne 
and Goldsmith, can be said to have had its birth 
and growth to a lusty manhood and to have defined 
once and for all the mold of this new and potent 
form of prose art. By 1773 a critic speaks of the 
" novel-writing age " ; and a dozen years later, in 
1785, novels are so common that we hear of the 
press " groaning beneath their weight," — which 
sounds like the twentieth century. And it was all 
started by the little printer; to him the praise. 
He received it in full measure; here and there, of 
course, a dissident voice was heard, one, that of 
Fielding, to be very vocal later; but mostly they 
were drowned in the chorus of adulation. Richard- 
son had done a new thing and reaped an immediate 
reward ; and — as seldom happens, with quick recogni- 
tion — it was to be a permanent reward as well, for 
he changed the history of English literature. 



RICHARDSON 35 

One would have expected him to produce another 
novel post-haste, following up his maiden victory 
before it could be forgotten, after the modern man- 
ner. But those were leisured days and it was half 
a dozen years before " Clarissa Harlowe " was 
given to the public. Richardson had begun by tak- 
ing a heroine out of low life; he now drew one from 
genteel middle class life ; as he was in " Sir Charles 
Grandison," the third and last of his fictions, to 
depict a hero in the upper class life of England. 
In Clarissa again, plot was secondary, analysis, sen- 
timent, the exhibition of the female heart under 
stress of sorrow, this was everything. Clarissa's 
hand is sought by an unattractive suitor ; she rebels — 
a social crime in the eighteenth century ; whereat, her 
whole family turn against her — father, mother, sister, 
brothers, uncles and aunts — and, wooed by Lovelace, 
a dashing rake who is in love with her according to 
his lights, but by no means intends honorable matri- 
mony, she flies with him in a chariot and four, to find 
herself in a most anomalous position, and so dies 
broken-hearted; to be followed in her fate by Love- 
lace, who is represented as a man whose loose prin- 
ciples are in conflict with a nature which is far from 
being utterly bad. The narrative is mainly devel- 
oped through letters exchanged between Clarissa and 
her friend. Miss Howe. There can hardly be a more 
striking testimony to the leisure enjoyed by the 
eighteenth century than that society was not bored 



86 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

bj a storj the length of which seems almost in- 
terminable to the reader to-day. The slow move- 
ment is sufficient to preclude its present prosperity. 
It is safe to say that Richardson is but little read 
now; read much less than his great contemporary, 
Fielding. And apparently it is his bulk rather than 
his want of human interest or his antiquated manner 
that explains the fact. The instinct to-day is 
against fiction that is slow and tortuous in its on- 
ward course; at least so it seemed until Mr. De 
Morgan returned in his delightful volumes to the 
method of the past. Those are pertinent words 
of the distinguished Spanish novelist, Valdes : " An 
author who wishes to be read not only in his life, 
but after his death (and the author who does not 
wish this should lay aside his pen), cannot shut 
his eyes, when unblinded by vanity, to the fact that 
not only is it necessary to be interesting to save 
himself from oblivion, but the story must not be a 
very long one. The world contains so many great and 
beautiful works that it requires a long life to read 
them all. To ask the public, always anxious for 
novelty, to read a production of inordinate length, 
when so many others are demanding attention, seems 
to me useless and ridiculous. . . . The most note- 
worthy instance of what I say is seen in the cele- 
brated English novelist, Richardson, who, in spite 
of his admirable genius and exquisite sensibility and 
perspicuity, added to the fact of his being the father 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS 37 

of the modern Novel, is scarcely read nowadays, at 
least in Latin countries. Given the indisputable 
beauties of his works, this can only be due to their 
extreme length. And the proof of this, that in 
France and Spain, to encourage the taste for them, 
the most interesting parts have been extracted and 
published in editions and compendiums." 

This is suggestive, coming from one who speaks 
by the book. Who, in truth, reads epics now — 
save in the enforced study of school and college? 
Will not Browning's larger works — like " The Ring 
and the Book " — suffer disastrously with the passing 
of time because of a lack of continence, of a failure 
to realize that since life is short, art should not be 
too long? It may be, too, that Richardson, newly 
handling the sentiment which during the following 
generation was to become such a marked trait of 
imaginative letters, revelled in it to an extent un- 
palatable to our taste ; " rubbing our noses," as 
Leslie Stephen puts it, "in all her (Clarissa's) 
agony," — the tendency to overdo a new thing, not 
to be resisted in his case. But with all concessions 
to length and sentimentality, criticism from that 
day to this has been at one in agreeing that here 
is not only Richardson's best book but a truly great 
Novel. Certainly one who patiently submits to a 
ruminant reading of the story, will find that when 
at last the long-deferred climax is reached and the 
awed and penitent Lovelace describes the death-bed 



3S MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

moments of the girl he has ruined, the scene has 
a great moving power. Allowing for differences of 
taste and time, the vogue of the Novel in Richard- 
son's day can easily be understood, and through all 
the stiffness, the stilted effect of manner and speech, 
and the stifling conventions of the entourage^ a sweet 
and charming young woman in very piteous distress 
emerges to live in affectionate memory. After all, 
no poor ideal of womanhood is pictured in Clarissa. 
She is one of the heroines who are unforgettable, 
dear. Mr. Howells, with his stern insistence on truth 
in characterization, declares that she Is " as freshly 
modem as any girl of yesterday or to-morrow. 
' Clarissa Harlowe,' in spite of her eighteenth cen- 
tury costume and keeping, remains a masterpiece in 
the portraiture of that ever-womanly which is of all 
times and places." 

Lovelace, too, whose name has become a synonym 
for the fine gentleman betrayer, is drawn in a way 
to make him sympathetic and creditable; he is far 
from being a stock figure of villainy. And the 
minor figures are often enjoyable; the friendship 
of Clarissa with Miss Howe, a young woman of 
excellent good sense and seemingly quite devoid of 
the ultra-sentiment of her time, preludes that be- 
tween Diana and her " Tony " in Meredith's great 
novel. As a general picture of the society of the 
period, the book is full of illuminations and side- 
lights; of course, the whole action is set on a stage 



RICHARDSON 39 

that bespeaks Richardson's narrow, middle class 
morality, his worship of rank, his belief that worldly 
goods are the reward of well-doing. 

As for the contemporaneous public, it wept and 
praised and went with fevered blood because of this 
fiction. We have heard how women of sentiment 
in London town welcomed the book and the oppor- 
tunity it offered for unrestrained tears. But it 
was the same abroad; as Ik Marvel has it, Rousseau 
and Diderot over in France, philosophers as they 
professed to be, " blubbered their admiring thanks 
for ' Clarissa Harlowe.' " Similarly, at a later day 
we find caustic critics like Jeffrey and Macaulay 
writing to Dickens to tell how they had cried over 
the death of Little Nell — a scene the critical to-day 
are likely to stigmatize as one of the few examples 
of pathos overdone to be found in the works of 
that master. It is scarcely too much to say that 
the outcome of no novel in the English tongue was 
watched with such bated breath as was that of 
" Clarissa Harlowe " while the eight successive books 
were being issued. 

Richardson chose to bask for another half dozen 
years in the fame of his second novel, before turning 
in 1754 to his final attempt, " Sir Charles Grandi- 
son," wherein it was his purpose to depict the per- 
fect pattern of a gentleman, " armed at all points " 
of social and moral behavior. We must bear in 
mind that when " Clarissa " was published he was 



40 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

sixty years of age and to be pardoned if he did 
not emulate so many novel-makers of these brisker 
mercantile times and turn off a story or so a year. 
By common confession, this is the poorest of 
his three fictions. In the first place, we are asked 
to move more steadily in the aristocratic atmosphere 
where the novelist did not breathe to best advantage. 
Again, Richardson was an adept in drawing women 
rather than men and hence was self-doomed in elect- 
ing a masculine protagonist. He is also off his 
proper ground in laying part of the action in Italy. 
His beau ideal, Grandison, turns out the most im- 
possible prig in English literature. He is as in- 
sufferable as that later prig, Meredith's Sir Wil- 
loughby in " The Egotist," with the difference that 
the author does not know it, and that you do not be- 
lieve in him for a moment ; whereas Meredith's crea- 
tion is appallingly true, a sort of simulacrum of us 
all. The best of the story is in its portrayal of wom- 
ankind ; in particular. Sir Charles' two loves, the Eng- 
lish Harriet Byron and the Italian Clementina, the 
last of whom is enamored of him, but separated by 
religious differences. Both are alive and though 
suffering in the reader's estimation because of their 
devotion to such a stick as Grandison, nevertheless 
touch our interest to the quick. The scene in which 
Grandison returns to Italy to see Clementina, whose 
reason, it is feared, is threatened because of her 
grief over his loss, is genuinely effective and affecting. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS 41 

The mellifluous sentimentality, too, of the novelist 
seems to come to a climax in this book; justifying 
Taine's satiric remark that " these phrases should be 
accompanied by a mandolin." The moral tag is 
infallibly supplied, as in all Richardson's tales — 
though perhaps here with an effect of crescendo. 
We are still long years from that conception of art 
which holds that a beautiful thing may be allowed 
to speak for itself and need not be moraled down 
our throats like a physician's prescription. Yet 
Fielding had already, as we shall see, struck a whole- 
some note of satiric fun. The plot is slight and 
centers in an abduction which, by the time it is 
used in the third novel, begins to pall as a device 
and to suggest paucity of invention. The novel 
has the prime merit of brevity; it is much shorter 
than " Clarissa Harlowe," but long enough, in all 
conscience, Harriet being blessed with the gift of 
gab, like all Richardson's heroines. " She follows 
the maxim of Clarissa," says Lady Mary with telling 
humor, " of declaring all she thinks to all the people 
she sees without reflecting that in this mortal state 
of imperfection, fig-leaves are as necessary for our 
minds as our bodies." It is significant that this 
brilliant contemporary is very hard on Richardson's 
characterization of women in this volume (which she 
says "sinks horribly"), whereas never a word has 
she to say in condemnation of the hero, who to the 
present critical eye seems the biggest blot on the 



42 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

performance. How can we join the chorus of praise 
led by Harriet, now her ladyship and his loving 
spouse, when it chants : " But could he be otherwise 
than the best of husbands who was the most dutiful 
of sons, who is the most affectionate of brothers, 
the most faithful of friends, who is good upon prin- 
ciple in every relation in life? " Lady Mary is 
also extremely severe on the novelist's attempt to 
paint Italy; when he talks of it, says she, "it is 
plain he is no better acquainted with it than he is 
with the Kingdom of Mancomingo." It is probable 
that Richardson could not say more for his Italian 
knowledge than did old Roger Ascham of Archery 
fame, when he declared : " I was once in Italy, but 
I thank God my stay there was only nine days." 
" Sir Charles Grandison " has also the substantial 
advantage of ending well: that is, if to marry Sir 
Charles can be so regarded, and certainly Harriet 
deemed it desirable. 

It is pleasant to think of Richardson, now well 
into the sixties, amiable, plump and prosperous, sur- 
rounded for the remainder of his days — he was to 
die seven years later at the ripe age of seventy-five — 
by a bevy of admiring women, who, whether literary 
or merely human, gave this particular author that 
warm and convincing proof of popularity which, 
to most, is worth a good deal of chilly posthumous 
fame which a man is not there to enjoy. Looking 
at his work retrospectively, one sees that it must 



RICHARDSON 43 

always have authority, even if it fall deadly dull 
upon our ears to-day; for nothing can take away 
from him the distinction of originating that kind 
of fiction which, now well along towards its second 
century of existence, is still popular and powerful. 
Richardson had no model; he shaped a form for 
himself. Fielding, a greater genius, threw his fiction 
into a mold cast by earlier writers ; moreover, he 
received his direct impulse away from the drama 
and towards the novel from Richardson himself. 

The author of " Pamela " demonstrated once and 
for all the interest that lies in a sympathetic and 
truthful representation of character in contrast with 
that interest in incident for its own sake which means 
the subordination of character, so that the persons 
become mere subsidiary counters in the game. And 
he exhibited such a knowledge of the subtler phases 
of the nooks and crannies of woman's heart, as to be 
hailed as past-master down to the present day by 
a whole school of analysts and psychologues ; for 
may it not be said that it is the popular distinction 
of the nineteenth century fiction to place woman in 
the pivotal position in that social complex which 
it is the business of the Novel to represent? Do 
not our fiction and drama to-day — the drama a 
belated ally of the Novel in this and other regards — 
find in the delineation of the eternal feminine under 
new conditions of our time, its chief, its most sig- 
nificant motif? If so, a special gratitude is due 



44 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

the placid little Mr. Richardson with his Pamelas, 
Clarissas and Harriets. He found fiction unwritten 
so far as the chronicles of contemporary society were 
concerned, and left it in such shape that it was 
recognized as the natural quarry of all who would 
paint manners ; a field to be worked by Jane Austen, 
Dickens and Thackeray, Trollope and George Eliot, 
and a modern army of latter and lesser students of 
life. His faults were in part merely a reflection of 
his time; its low-pitched morality, its etiquette which 
often seems so absurd. Partly it was his own, too ; 
for he utterly lacked humor (save where uncon- 
scious) and never grasped the great truth that in 
literary art the half is often more than the whole; 
The Terentian ne quid nimis had evidently not been 
taken to heart by Samuel Richardson, Esquire, of 
Hammersmith, author of " Clarissa Harlowe " in 
eight volumes, and Printer to the Queen. Again and 
again one of Clarissa's bursts of emotion under the 
tantalizing treatment of her seducer loses its effect 
because another burst succeeds before we (and she) 
have recovered from the first one. He strives to 
give us the broken rhythm of life (therein showing 
his affinity with the latter day realists) instead of 
that higher and harder thing — the more perfect 
rhythm of art; not so much the truth (which can- 
not be literally given) as that seeming-true which 
is the aim and object of the artistic representation. 
Hence the necessity of what Brunetiere calls in an 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS 45 

admirable phrase, the true function of the novel — 
" to be an abridged representation of life." Con- 
struction in the modern sense Richardson had not 
studied, naturally enough, and was innocent of the 
fineness of method and the sure-handed touches of 
later technique. And there is a kind of drawing- 
room atmosphere in his books, a lack of ozone which 
makes Fielding with all his open-air coarseness a 
relief. But judged in the setting of his time, this 
writer did a wonderful thing not only as the Father 
of the Modem Novel but one of the few authors 
in the whole range of fiction who holds his con- 
spicuous place amid shifting literary modes and 
fashions, because he built upon the surest of all 
foundations — the social instinct, and the human 
heart. 

If the use of the realistic method alone denoted 
the Novel, Defoe, not Richardson, might be called its 
begetter. " Robinson Crusoe," more than twenty 
years before " Pamela," would occupy the primate 
position, to say nothing of Swift's " Gulliver's Trav- 
els," antedating Richardson's first story by some 
fifteen years. Certainly the observational method, 
the love of detail, the grave narrative of imagined 
fact (if the bull be permitted) are in this earlier 
book in full force. But " Robinson Crusoe " is not 
a rival because it does not study man-in-society ; 
never was a story that depended less upon this kind 
of interest. The position of Crusoe on his desert 



46 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

isle is so eminently unsocial that he w.elcomes the 
black man Friday and quivers at the human quality 
in the famed footprints in the sand. As for Swift's 
chef d'osuvre, it is a fairy-tale with a grimly real- 
istic manner and a savage satiric intention. To 
speak of either of these fictions as novels is an 
example of the prevalent careless nomenclature. Be- 
tween them and " Pamela " there yawns a chasm. 
Moreover, " Crusoe " is a frankly picaresque tale be- 
longing to the elder line of romantic fiction, where 
incident and action and all the thrilling haps of Ad- 
venture-land furnish the basis of appeal rather than 
character analysis or a study of social relations. 
The personality of Crusoe is not advanced a whit by 
his wonderful experiences; he is done entirely from 
the outside. 

Richardson, therefore, marks the beginning of the 
modern form. But that the objection to Defoe as 
the true and only begetter of the Novel lies in his 
failure, in his greatest story, to center the interest 
in man as part of the social order and as human 
soul, is shown by the fact that his less known, but 
remarkable, story " Moll Flanders," picaresque as it 
is and depicting the life of a female criminal, has 
yet considerable character study and gets no small 
part of its appeal for a present-day reader from the 
minute description of the fall and final reform of the 
degenerate woman. It is comparatively crude in 
characterization, but psychological value is not en- 



RICHARDSON 47 

tirely lacking. However, with Richardson it is al- 
most all. It was of the nature of his genius to make 
psychology paramount: just there is found his 
modernity. Defoe and Swift may be said to have 
added some slight interest in analysis pointing to- 
wards the psychologic method, which was to find full 
expression in Samuel Richardson. 



CHAPTER III 

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS: 
FIELDING 

It is interesting to ask if Henry Fielding, barris- 
ter, journalist, tinker of plays and man-about- 
town, would ever have turned novelist, had it not 
been for Richardson, his predecessor. So slight, so 
seemingly accidental, are the incidents which make or 
mar careers and change the course of literary history. 
Certain it is that the immediate cause of Fielding's 
first story was the effect upon him of the fortunes 
of the virtuous Pamela. A satirist and humorist 
where Richardson was a somewhat solemn sentimental- 
ist. Fielding was quick to see the weakness, and — 
more important, — the opportunity for caricature, in 
such a tale, whose folk harangued about morality 
and whose avowed motive was a kind of hard-sur- 
faced, carefully calculated honor, for sale to the 
highest bidder. It was easy to recognize that 
Pamela was not only good but goody-goody. So 
Fielding, being thirty-five years of age and of un- 
certain income — he had before he was thirty squan- 
dered his mother's estate, — turned himself, two years 
after " Pamela " had appeared, to a new field and 

48 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS 49 

concocted the story known to the world of letters as : 
" The Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend 
Abraham Adams." 

This Joseph purports to be the brother of Pamela 
(though the denouement reveals him as more gently 
bom) and is as virtuous in his character of serving- 
man as the sister herself; indeed, he outvirtues her. 
Fielding waggishly exhibits him in the full exercise 
of a highly-starched decorum rebuffing the amatory 
attempts of sundry ladies whose assault upon the 
citadel of his honor is analogous to that of Mr. B., — 
who naturally becomes Squire Booby in Fielding's 
hands — upon the long suffering Pamela. Thus, 
Lady Booby, in whose employ Joseph is footman, 
after an invitation to him to kiss her which has been 
gently but firmly refused, bursts out with : " Can a 
boy, a stripling, have the confidence to talk of his 
virtue? " 

" Madam," says Joseph, " that boy is the brother 
of Pamela and would be ashamed that the chastity of 
his family, which is preserved in her, should be stained 
in him.'* 

The chance for fun is palpable here. But some- 
thing unexpected happened: what was begun as bur- 
lesque, almost horse-play, began to pass from the 
key of shallow, lively satire, broadening and deepen- 
ing into a finer tone of truth. In a few chapters, 
by the time the writer had got such an inimitable 
personage as Parson Adams before the reader, it was 



50 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

seen that the book was to be more than a jeu d* esprit: 
rather, the work of a master of characterization. 
Li short, Joseph Andrews started out ostensibly to 
poke good-natured ridicule at sentimental Mr. 
Richardson: it ended by furnishing contemporary 
London and all subsequent readers with a notable 
example of the novel of mingled character and in- 
cident, entertaining alike for its lively episodes and 
its broadly genial delineation of types of the time. 
And so he soon had the town laughing with him at his 
broad comedy. 

In every respect Fielding made a sharp contrast 
with Richardson. He was gentle-born, distinguished 
and fashionable in his connections : the son of younger 
sons, impecunious, generous, of strong often unreg- 
ulated passions, — what the world calls a good fellow, 
a man's man — albeit his affairs with the fair sex 
were numerous. He knew high society when he 
choose to depict it: his education compared with 
Richardson's was liberal and he based liis style of 
fiction upon models which the past supplied, where- 
as Richardson had no models, blazed his own trail. 
Fielding's literary ancestry looks back to " Gil Bias " 
and " Don Quixote," and in English to " Robinson 
Crusoe." In other words, his type, however much 
he departs from it, is the picturesque story of adven- 
ture. He announced, in fact, on his title-page that 
he u^rote " in imitation of the manner of Cervantes." 

Again, his was a genius for comedy, where Rich- 



FIELDING 51 

ardson, as we have seen, was a psychologist. The 
cleansing effect of wholesome laughter and an outdoor 
gust of hale west wind is offered by him, and with it 
go the rude, coarse things to be found in Nature 
who is nevertheless in her influence so salutary, so 
necessary, in truth, to our intellectual and moral 
health. Here then was a sort of fiction at many re- 
moves from the slow, analytic studies of Richardson : 
buoyant, objective, giving far more play to action 
and incident, uniting in most agreeable proportions 
the twin interests of character and event. The very 
title of this first book is significant. We are invited 
to be present at a delineation of two men, — but these 
men are displayed in a series of adventures. Un- 
questionably, the psychology is simpler, cruder, more 
elementary than that of Richardson. Dr. Johnson, 
who much preferred the author of " Pamela " to the 
author of " Tom Jones " and said so in the hammer- 
and-tongs style for which he is famous, declared to 
Bozzy that " there is all the difference in the world 
between characters of nature and characters of 
manners : and there is the difference between the char- 
acters of Fielding and those of Richardson. 
Characters of manners are very entertaining; but 
they are to be understood by a more superficial 
observer than characters of nature, where a man must 
dive into the recesses of the human heart." 

And although we may share Boswell's feeling that 
Johnson estimated the compositions of Richardson 



52 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

too highly and that he had an unreasonable prejudice 
against Fielding — since he was a man of magnifi- 
cent biases — jet we may grant that the critic-god 
made a sound distinction here, that Fielding's 
method is inevitably more external and shallow than 
that of an analyst proper like Richardson ; no doubt 
to the great joy of many weary folk who go to 
novels for the rest and refreshment they give, rather 
than for their thought-evoking value. 

The contrast between these novelists is maintained, 
too, in the matter of style: Fielding walks with the 
easy undress of a gentleman: Richardson sits some- 
what stiff and pragmatical, carefully arrayed in full- 
bottomed wig, and knee breeches, delivering a lecture 
from his garden chair. Fielding is a master of 
that colloquial manner afterwards handled with such 
success by Tliackeray : a manner " good alike for 
grave or gay," and making this early fiction-maker 
enjoyable. Quite apart from our relish of his vivid 
portrayals of life, we like his wayside chatting. 
For another diff'erence: there is no moral motto or 
announcement : the lesson takes care of itself. What 
unity there is of construction, is found in the fact 
that certain characters, more or less related, are 
seen to walk centrally through the narrative: there 
is little or no plot development in the modern sense 
and the method (the method of the type) is frankly 
episodic. 

In view of what the Novel was to become in the 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS 53 

nineteenth century, Richardson's way was more mod- 
ern, and did more to set a seal upon fiction than 
Fielding's : the Novel to-day is first of all psychologic 
and serious. And the assertion is safe that all the 
later development derives from these two kinds 
written by the two greatest of the eighteenth century 
pioneers, Richardson and Fielding: on the one hand, 
character study as a motive, on the other the por- 
trayal of personality surrounded by the external 
factors of life. The wise combination of the two, 
gives us that tangle of motive, act and circumstance 
which makes up human existence. 

With regard to the morals of the story, a word 
may here be said, having all Fielding's fiction in 
mind. Of the suggestive prurience of much modern 
novelism, whether French or French-derived, he. 
Fielding, is quite free: he deals with the sensual 
relations with a frank acknowledgment of their 
physical basis. The truth is, the eighteenth cen- 
tury, whether in England or elsewhere, was on a 
lower plane in this respect than our own time. 
Fielding, therefore, while he does no affront to essen- 
tial decency, does offend our taste, our refinement, 
in dealing with this aspect of life. We have in a 
true sense become more civilized since 1750: the ape 
and tiger of Tennyson's poem have receded some- 
what in human nature during the last century and 
a half. The plea that since Fielding was a realist 
depicting society as it was in his day, his license is 



54 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

legitimate, whereas Richardson was giving a sort 
of sentimentalized stained-glass picture of it not as 
it was but, in his opinion, should be, — is a specious 
one; it is well that in literature, faithful reflector 
of the ideals of the race, the beast should be allowed 
to die (as Mr. Howells, himself a staunch realist, has 
said), simply because it is slowly dying in life itself. 
Fielding's novels in unexpurgated form are not for 
household reading to-day: the fact may not be a re- 
flection upon him, but it is surely one to congratulate 
ourselves upon, since it testifies to social evolution. 
However, for those whose experience of life is suffi- 
ciently broad and tolerant, these novels hold no harm : 
there is a tonic quality to them. — Even bowdlerization 
is not to be despised with such an author, when it 
makes him suitable for the hands of those who other- 
wise might receive injury from the contact. The 
critic-sneer at such an idea forgets that good art 
comes out of sound morality as well as out of sound 
esthetics. It is pleasant to hear a critic of such 
standing as Brunetiere in his " L'Art et Morale " 
speak with spiritual clarity upon this subject, so 
often turned aside with the shrug of impatient scorn. 
The episodic character of the story was to be the 
manner of Fielding in all his fiction. There are 
detached bits of narrative, stories within stories — 
witness that dealing with the high comedy figures of 
Leonora and Bellamine — and the novelist does not 
bother his head if only he can get his main characters 



FIELDING 55 

in motion, — on the road, in a tavern or kitchen 
brawl, astride a horse for a cross-country dash after 
the hounds. Charles Dickens, whose models were of 
the eighteenth century, made similar use of the epi- 
sode in his early work, as readers of " Pickwick " 
may see for themselves. 

The first novel was received with acclaim and 
stirred up a pretty literary quarrel, for Richardson 
and his admiring clique would have been more than 
human had they not taken umbrage at so obvious a 
satire. Recriminations were hot and many. 

Mr. Andrew Lang should give us in a dialogue be- 
tween dead authors, a meeting in Hades between the 
two : it would be worth any climatic risk to be present 
and hear what was said; Lady Mary, who may once 
more be put on the witness-stand, tells how, being 
in residence in Italy, and a box of light literature 
from England having arrived at ten o'clock of the 
night, she could not but open it and " falling upon 
Fielding's works, was fool enough to sit up all night 
reading. I think ' Joseph Andrews ' better than his 
Foundling " — the reference being, of course, to 
"Tom Jones"; a judgment not jumping with that 
of posterity, which has declared the other to be his 
masterpiece; yet not an opinion to be despised, com- 
ing from one of the keenest intellects of the time. 
Lady Mary, whose cousin Fielding was, had a clear 
eye alike for his literary merits and personal foibles 
and faults, but heartily liked him and acted as his 



56 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

literary mentor in his earlier days ; his maiden play 
was dedicated to her and her interest in him was more 
than passing. 

The Bohemian barrister and literary hack who 
had made a love-match half a dozen years before and 
now had a wife and several children to care for, must 
have been vastly encouraged by the favorable recep- 
tion of his first essay into fiction ; at last, he had 
found the kind of literature congenial to his talents 
and likely to secure suitable renown : his metier as an 
artist of letters was discovered, as we might now 
choose to express it ; he would hardly have taken him- 
self so seriously. It was natural that he should pub- 
lish the next year a three volume collection of his 
miscellany, which contained his second novel, " Mr. 
Jonathan Wild The Great," distinctly the least liked 
of his four stories, because of its bitter irony, its 
almost savage tone, the gloom which surrounds the 
theme, a powerful, full-length portrayal of a famous 
thief-taker of the period, from his birth to his bad 
end on a Newgate gallows. Mr. Wild is a sort of 
foreglimpse of the Sherlock Holmes-Raffles of our 
own day. 

Fielding's wife died this year and it may be that 
sorrow for her fatal illness was the subjective cause 
of the tone of this gruesomely attractive piece of 
fiction; but there is some reason for believing it to 
be an earlier work than " Joseph Andrews " ; it be- 
longs to a more primitive type of story-making, 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS 57 

because of its sensational features : its dependence for 
interest upon the seamy side of aspects of life ex- 
hibited like magic lantern slides with little connection, 
but spectacular effects. The satire of the book is 
directed at that immoral confusion between greatness 
and goodness, the rascally Jonathan being pictured 
in grave mock-heroics as in every way worthy — and 
the sardonic force at times almost suggests the pen 
of Dean Swift. 

But such work was but a prelude to what was 
to follow. When the world thinks of Henry Field- 
ing it thinks of " Tom Jones," it is almost as if he 
had written naught else. " The History of Tom 
Jones, A Foundling " appeared six years after 
" Jonathan Wild," the intermediate time (aside from 
the novel itself) being consumed in editing journals 
and officiating as a Justice of the Peace: the last a 
role it is a little difficult, in the theater phrase, to 
see him in. He was two and forty when the book 
was published: but as he had been at work upon it 
for a long while (he speaks of the thousands of 
hours he had been toiling over it), it may be ascribed 
to that period of a man's growth when he is passing 
intellectually from youth to early maturity; every- 
thing considered, perhaps the best productive period. 
His health had already begun to break: and he was 
by no means free of the harassments of debt. Al- 
though successful in his former attempt at fiction, 
novel writing was but an aside with him, after all; 



58 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

he had not during the previous six years given regu- 
lar time and attention to Hterary composition, as a 
modern story-maker would have done under the stim- 
ulus of like encouragement. The eighteenth cen- 
tury audience, it must be borne in mind, was not 
large enough nor sufficiently eager for an attractive 
new form of literature, to justify a man of many 
trades like Fielding in devoting his days steadily 
to the writing of fiction. There is to the last an 
effect of the gifted amateur about him ; Taine tells 
the anecdote of his refusal to trouble himself to 
change a scene in one of his plays, which Garrick 
begged him to do : " Let them find it out," he said, 
referring to the audience. And when the scene was 
hissed, he said to the disconsolate player : " I did not 
give them credit for it : they have found it out, have 
they? " In other words, he was knowing to his own 
poor art, content if only it escaped the public eye. 
This is some removes from the agonizing over a 
phrase of a Flaubert. 

Like the preceding story, " Tom Jones " has its 
center of plot in a life history of the foundling who 
grows into a young manhood that is full of high 
spirits and escapades: likable always, even if, judged 
by the straight-laced standards of Richardson, one 
may not approve. Jones loves Sophia Western, 
daughter of a typical three-bottle, hunting squire: 
of course he prefers the little cad Blifil, with his 
money and position, where poor Tom has neither: 



FIELDING 59 

equally of course Sophia (whom the reader heartily 
likes, in spite of her name) prefers the handsome 
Jones with his blooming complexion and many ama- 
tory adventures. And, since we are in the simple- 
minded days of fiction when it was the business of 
the sensible novelist to make us happy at the close, 
the low-bom lover, assisted by Squire Allworthy, who 
is a deus ex machina a trifle too good for human 
nature's daily food, gets his girl (in imitation of 
Joseph Andrewsj and is shown to be close kin to 
Allworthy — tra-la-la, tra-la-lee, it is all charm- 
ingly simple and easy ! The beginners of the English 
novel had only a few little tricks in their box in the 
way of incident and are for the most part innocent 
of plot in the Wilkie Collins sense of the word. The 
opinion of Coleridge that the " Oedipus Tyrannus," 
" The Alchemist" and " Tom Jones " are " the three 
most perfect plots ever planned " is a curious com- 
ment upon his conception of fiction, since few stories 
have been more plotless than Fielding's best book. 
The fact is, biographical fiction like this is to be 
judged by itself, it has its own laws of techinque. 

The glory of " Tom Jones " is in its episodes, its 
crowded canvas, the unfailing verve and variety of 
its action : in the fine open-air atmosphere of the 
scenes, the sense of the stir of life they convey : most 
of all, in an indescribable manliness or humanness 
which bespeaks the true comic force — something of 
that same comic view that one detects in Shakspere 



60 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

and Moliere and Cervantes. It means an open-eyed 
acceptance of life, a realization of its seriousness yet 
with the will to take it with a smile : a large tolerancy 
which forbids the view conventional or parochial or 
aristocratic — in brief, the view limited. There is 
this in the book, along with much psychology so 
superficial as to seem childish, and much interpreta- 
tion that makes us feel that the higher possibilities 
of men and women are not as yet even dreamed of. 
In this novel. Fielding makes fuller use than he had 
before of the essay link: the chapters introductory 
to the successive books, — and in them, a born essay- 
ist, as your master of style is pretty sure to be, 
he discourses in the wisest and wittiest way on topics 
literary, philosophical or social, having naught to 
do with the story in hand, it may be, but highly 
welcome for its own sake. This manner of pausing 
by the way for general talk about the world in terms 
of Me has been used since by Thackeray, with de- 
lightful results : but has now become old-fashioned, 
because we conceive it to be the novelist's business to 
stick close to his story and not obtrude his person- 
ality at all. Thackeray displeases a critic like Mr. 
James by his postscript harangues about himself as 
Showman, putting his puppets into the box and shut- 
ting up his booth: fiction is too serious a matter to 
be treated so lightly by its makers — to say nothing 
of the audience: it is more, much more than mere 
fooling and show-business. But to go back to the 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS 61 

eighteenth century is to realize that the novel is 
being newly shaped, that neither novelist nor novel- 
reader is yet awake to the higher conception of the 
genre. So we wax lenient and are glad enough to 
get these resting-places of chat and charm from 
Fielding: it may not be war, but it is nevertheless 
magnificent. 

Fielding in this fiction is remarkable for his keen 
observation of every-day life and character, the aver- 
age existence in town and country of mankind high 
and low: he is a truthful reporter, the verisimilitude 
of the picture is part of its attraction. It is not too 
much to say that, pictorially, he is the first great 
English realist of the Novel. For broad comedy 
presentation he is unsurpassed: as well as for satiric 
gravity of comment and illustration. It may be 
questioned, however, whether when he strives to de- 
pict the deeper phases of human relations he is so 
much at home or anything like so happy. There is 
no more critical test of a novelist than his handling 
of the love passion. Fielding essays in " Tom 
Jones " to show the love between two very likable 
flesh-and-blood young folk: the many mishaps of the 
twain being but an embroidery upon the accepted 
fact that the course of true love never did run 
smooth. There is a certain scene which gives us 
an interview between Jones and Sophia, following on 
a stormy one between father and daughter, during 
which the Squire has struck his child to the ground 



62 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

and left her there with blood and tears streaming 
down her face. Her disobedience in not accepting 
the addresses of the unspeakable Blifil is the cause 
of the somewhat drastic parental treatment. Jones 
has assured the Squire that he can make Sophia 
see the error of her ways and has thus secured a 
moment with her. He finds her just risen from the 
ground, in the sorry plight already described. Then 
follows this dialogue: 

" ' O, my Sophia, what means this dreadful sight? ' 

" She looked softly at him for a moment before 
she spoke, and then said: 

" * Mr. Jones, for Heaven's sake, how came you 
here.'* Leave me, I beseech you, this moment.' 

" ' Do not,' says he, ' impose so harsh a command 
upon me. My heart bleeds faster than those lips. 
O Sophia, how easily could I drain my veins to pre- 
serve one drop of that dear blood.' 

" ' I have too many obligations to you already,' 
answered she, ' for sure you meant them such.' 

" Here she looked at him tenderly almost a minute, 
and then bursting into an agony, cried: 

" ' Oh, Mr. Jones, why did you save my life.^^ 
My death would have been happier for us both.' 

" ' Happy for us both ! ' cried he. ' Could racks 
or wheels kill me so painfully as Sophia's — I cannot 
bear the dreadful sound. Do I live but for her.'' ' 

" Both his voice and look were full of irrepressible 
tenderness when he spoke these words ; and at the 



FIELDING 63 

same time he laid gently hold on her hand, which 
she did not withdraw from him; to say the truth, 
she hardly knew what she did or suffered. A few 
moments now passed in silence between these 
lovers, while his eyes were eagerly fixed on Sophia, 
and hers declining toward the ground; at last she 
recovered strength enough to desire him again 
to leave her, for that her certain ruin would be 
the consequence of their being found together; 
adding : 

" ' Oh, Mr. Jones, you know not, you know not 
what hath passed this cruel afternoon.' 

" ' I know all, my Sophia,' answered he ; ' your 
cruel father hath told me all, and he himself hath 
sent me hither to you.' 

" ' My father sent you to me ! ' replied she : ' sure 
you dream ! ' 

" ' Would to Heaven,' cried he, ' it was but a 
dream. Oh ! Sophia, your father hath sent me to 
you, to be an advocate for my odious rival, to solicit 
you in his favor. I took any means to get access to 
you. O, speak to me, Sophia ! Comfort my bleed- 
ing heart. Sure no one ever loved, ever doted, like 
me. Do not unkindly withhold this dear, this soft, 
this gentle hand — one moment perhaps tears you 
forever from me. Nothing less than this cruel occa- 
sion could, I believe, have ever conquered the respect 
and love with which you have inspired me.' 

" She stood a moment silent, and covered with 



64 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

confusion; then, lifting up her eyes gently towards 
him, she cried: 

'' ' What would Mr. Jones have me say? ' 
We would seem to have here a writer not quite 
in his native element. He intends to interest us in 
a serious situation. Sophia is on the whole natural 
and winning, although one may stop to imagine w^hat 
kind of an agony is that which allows of so mathe- 
matical a division of time as is implied in the state- 
ment that she looked at her lover — tenderly, too, for- 
sooth ! — " almost a minute." The mood of mathe- 
matics and the mood of emotion, each excellent in 
itself, do not go together in life as they do in eight- 
eenth century fiction. But in the general impression 
she makes, Sophia, let us concede, is sweet and realiz- 
able. But Jones, whom we have long before this scene 
come to know and be fond of — Jones is here a prig, a 
bore, a dummy. Sir Charles Grandison in all his 
woodenness is not arrayed like one of these. Consider 
the situation further : Sophia is in grief ; she has blood 
and tears on her face — what would any lover, — nay, 
any respectable young man do in the premises .? Surely, 
stanch her wounds, dry her eyes, comfort her with 
a homely necessary handkerchief. But not so Jones : 
he is not a real man but a melodramatic lay-figure, 
playing to the gallery as he spouts speeches about 
the purely metaphoric bleeding of his heart, oblivious 
of the disfigurement of his sweetheart's visage from 
real blood. He insults her by addressing her in the 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS 65 

third person, mouths sentiments about his " odious 
rival" (a phrase with a superb Bowery smack to 
it!) and in general so disports himself as to make 
an effect upon the reader of complete unreality. 
This was no real scene to Fielding himself: why then 
should it be true: it has neither the accent nor the 
motion of life. The novelist is being " literary," is 
not warm to his work at all. When we turn from 
this attempt to the best love scenes in modern hands, 
the difference is world-wide. And this unreality — 
which violates the splendid credibility of the hero in 
dozens of other scenes in the book, — is all the worse 
coming from a writer who expressly announces his 
intention to destroy the prevalent conventional hero 
of fiction and set up something better in his place. 
Whereas Tom in the quoted scene is nothing if not 
conventional and drawn in the stock tradition of 
mawkish heroics. The plain truth is that with Field- 
ing love is an appetite rather than a sentiment and he 
is only completely at ease when painting its rollick- 
ing, coarse and passional aspects. 

In its unanalytic method and loose construction 
this Novel, compared with Richardson, is a throw- 
back to a more primitive pattern, as we saw was the 
case with Fielding's first fiction. But in another 
important characteristic of the modern Novel it sur- 
passes anything that had earlier appeared: I refer 
to the way it puts before the reader a great variety 
of human beings, so that a sense of teeming exist- 



66 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

ence is given, a genuine imitation of the spatial com- 
plexity of life, if not of its depths. It is this effect, 
afterwards conveyed in fuller measure by Balzac, by 
Dickens, by Victor Hugo and by Tolstoy, that gives 
us the feeling that we are in the presence of a master 
of men, whatever his limitations of period or person- 
ality. 

How delightful are the subsidiary characters in 
the book ! One such is Partridge, the unsophis- 
ticated schoolmaster who, when he attends the theater 
with Tom and hears Garrick play " Hamlet," thinks 
but poorly of the player because he only does what 
anybody would do under the circumstances ! All- 
worthy and Blifil one may object to, each in his 
kind, for being conventionally good and bad, but 
in numerous male characters in less important roles 
there is compensation: the gypsy episode, for ex- 
ample, is full of raciness and relish. And what 
a gallei'y of women we get in the story : Mrs. Honour 
the maid, and Miss Western (who in some sort sug- 
gests Mrs. Nickleby), Mrs. Miller, Lady Bellaston, 
Mrs. Waters and other light-of-loves and dames of 
folly, whose dubious doings are carried off with such 
high good humor that we are inclined to overlook 
their misdeeds. There is a Chaucerian freshness 
about it all : at times comes the wish that such talent 
were used in a better cause. A suitable sub-title 
for the story, would be: Or Life in The Tavern, so 
large a share do Inns have in its unfolding. Field- 



FIELDING 67 

ing would have yielded hearty assent to Dr. John- 
son's dictum that a good inn stood for man's highest 
felicity here below: he relished the wayside comforts 
of cup and bed and company which they afford. 

" Tom Jones " quickly crossed the seas, was ad- 
mired in foreign lands. I possess a manuscript let- 
ter of Heine's dated from Mainz in 1830, requesting 
a friend to send him this novel: the German poet 
represents, in the request, the literary class which 
has always lauded Fielding's finest effort, while the 
wayfaring man who picks it up, also finds it to his 
liking. Thus it secures and is safe in a double 
audience. Yet we must return to the thought that 
such a work is strictly less significant in the evolu- 
tion of the modern Novel, because of its form, its 
reversion to type, than the model established by a 
man like Richardson, who is so much more restricted 
in gift. 

Fielding's fourth and final story, " Amelia," was 
given to the world two years later, and but three 
years before his premature death at Lisbon at the 
age of forty-nine — worn out by irregular living and 
the vicissitudes of a career which had been checkered 
indeed. He did strenuous work as a Justice these 
last years and carried on an efficacious campaign 
against criminals: but the lights were dimming, the 
play was nearly over. The pure gust of life which 
runs rampant and riotous in the pages of " Tom 
Jones " is tempered in " Amelia " by a quieter, sad- 



68 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

der tone and a more philosophic vision. It is in 
this way a less characteristic work, for it was of 
Fielding's nature to be instantly responsive to good 
cheer and the creature comforts of life. When she 
got the news of his death, Lady Mary wrote of him: 
" His happy constitution (even when he had, with 
great pains, half demolished it) made him forget 
everything when he was before a venison pastry or 
over a flask of champagne; and I am persuaded 
he has known more happy moments than any prince 
upon earth. His natural spirits gave him rapture 
with his cook-maid and cheerfulness in a garret." 
Here is a kit-kat showing the man indeed: all his 
fiction may be read in the light of it. The main 
interest in " Amelia " is found in its autobiograph- 
ical flavor, for the story, in describing the fortunes — 
or rather misfortunes — of Captain Booth and his 
wife, drew, it is pretty certain, upon Fielding's own 
traits and to some extent upon the incidents of his 
earlier life. The scenes where the Captain sets up 
for a country gentleman with his horses and hounds 
and speedily runs through his patrimony, is a tran- 
script of his own experience: and Amelia herself 
is a sort of memorial to his well-beloved first wife 
(he had married for a second his honest, good- 
hearted kitchen-maid), who out of aff'ection must 
have endured so much in daily contact with such 
a character as that of her charming husband. In 
the novel, Mrs. Booth always forgives, even as the 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BEGINNINGS 69 

Captain ever goes wrong. There would be some- 
thing sad in such a clear-eyed comprehension of 
one's own weakness, if we felt compelled to accept 
the theory that he was here drawing his own like- 
ness; which must not be pushed too far, for the 
Captain is one thing Fielding never was — to wit, 
stupid. There is in the book much realism of scene 
and incident; but its lack of animal spirits has al- 
ways militated against the popularity of " Amelia " ; 
in fact, it is accurate to say that Fielding's con- 
temporary public, and the reading world ever since, 
has confined its interest in his work to " Joseph 
Andrews " and " Tom Jones." 

The pathos of his ending, dying in Portugal 
whither he had gone on a vain quest for health, 
and his companionable qualities whether as man or 
author, can but make him a more winsome figure 
to us than proper little Mr. Richardson; and pos- 
sibly this feeling has affected the comparative esti- 
mates of the two writers. One responds readily to 
the sentiment of Austin Dobson's fine poem on Field- 
ing: 

" Beneath the green Estrella trees, 
No artist merely, but a man 
Wrought on our noblest island-plan, 
Sleeps with the alien Portuguese." 

And in the same way we are sympathetic with Thack- 
eray in the lecture on the English humorists : " Such 
a brave and gentle heart, such an intrepid and 



70 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

courageous spirit, I love to recognize in the manly, 
the English Harry Fielding." Imagine any later 
critic calling Richardson " Sam ! " It is inconceiv- 
able. 

Such then were the two men who founded the Eng- 
lish Novel, and such their work. Unlike in many re- 
spects, both as personalities and literary makers, 
they were, after all, alike in this: they showed the 
feasibility of making the life of contemporary so- 
ciety interesting in prose fiction. That was their 
great common triumph and it remains the keynote 
of all the subsequent development in fiction. They 
accomplished this, each in his own way: Richardson 
by sensibility often degenerating into sentimentality, 
and by analysis — the subjective method; Fielding 
by satire and humor (often coarse, sometimes bitter) 
and the wide envisagement of action and scene — the 
method objective. Richardson exhibits a somewhat 
straitened propriety and a narrow didactic trades- 
man's morality, with which we are now out of sym- 
pathy. Fielding, on the contrary, with the abuse 
of his good gift for tolerant painting of seamy 
human nature, gives way often to an indulgence 
of the lower instincts of mankind which, though 
faithfully reflecting his age, are none the less un- 
pleasant to modern taste. Both are men of genius, 
Fielding's being the larger and more universal: 
nothing but genius could have done such original 



FIELDING 71 

things as were achieved by the two. Nevertheless, 
set beside the great masters of fiction who were to 
come, and who will be reviewed in these pages, they 
are seen to have been excelled in art and at least 
equaled in gift and power. So much we may prop- 
erly claim for the marvelous growth and ultimate 
degree of perfection attained by the best novel-mak- 
ers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It 
remains now to show what part was played in the 
eighteenth century development by certain other 
novelists, who, while not of the supreme importance 
of these two leaders, yet each and all contributed 
to the shaping of the new fiction and did their share 
in leaving it at the century's end a perfected instru- 
ment, to be handled by a finished artist like Jane 
Austen. We must take some cognizance, in special, 
of writers like Smollett and Sterne and Goldsmith 
— potent names, evoking some of the pleasantest 
memories open to one who browses in the rich meadow 
lands of English literature. 



CHAPTER IV 

DEVELOPMENTS: SMOLLETT, STERNE AND 
OTHERS 

The popularity of Richardson and Fielding showed 
itself in a hearty public welcome: and also in that 
sincerest form of flattery, imitation. Many authors 
began to write the new fiction. Where once a 
definite demand is recognized in literature, the 
supply, more or less machine-made, is sure to 
follow. 

In the short quarter of a century between " Pam- 
ela " and "The Vicar of Wakefield," the Novel 
got its growth, passed out of leading strings into 
what may fairly be called independence and ma- 
turity: and by the time Goldsmith's charming little 
classic was written, the shelves were comfortably 
filled with novels recent or current, giving con- 
temporary literature quite the air so familiar to-day. 
Only a little later, we find the Gentlemaris Maga- 
zine, a trustworthy reporter of such matters, speak- 
ing of " this novel-writing age." The words were 
written in 1773, a generation after Richardson had 
begun the form. Still more striking testimony, so 
far back as 1755, when Richardson's maiden story 

72 



DEVELOPMENTS 73 

was but a dozen years old, a writer in " The Con- 
noisseur " is facetiously proposing to establish a fac- 
tory for the fashioning of novels, with one, a master 
workman, to furnish plots and subordinates to fill 
in the details — an anticipation of the famous literary 
menage of Dumas pere. 

Although there was, under these conditions, in- 
evitable imitation of the new model, there was a 
deeper reason for the rapid development. The time 
was ripe for this kind of fiction : it was in the air, 
as we have already tried to suggest. Hence, other 
fiction-makers began to experiment with the form, 
this being especially true of Smollett. Out of many 
novelists, feeble or truly called, a few of the most 
important must be mentioned. 



The Scotch-born Tobias Smollett published his 
first fiction, " Roderick Random," eight years after 
" Pamela " had appeared, and the year before " Tom 
Jones " ; it was exactly contemporaneous with " Cla- 
rissa Harlowe." A strict contemporary, then, with 
Richardson and Fielding, he was also the ablest novel- 
ist aside from them, a man whose work was most in- 
fluential in the later development. It is not unusual 
to dismiss him in a sentence as a coarser Fielding. 
The characterization hits nearer the bull's eye than 
is the rule with such sayings, and more vulgar than 



74 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

the greater writer he certainly is, brutal where Field- 
ing is vigorous : and he exhibits and exaggerates the 
latter's tendencies to the picaresque, the burlesque 
and the episodic. His fiction is of the elder school 
in its loose fiber, its external method of dealing with 
incident and character. There is little or nothing 
in Smollett of the firm-knit texture and subjective 
analysis of the moderns. Thus the resemblances are 
superficial, the differences deeper-going and palpa- 
ble. Smollett is often violent. Fielding never: there 
is an impression of cosmopolitanism in the former — 
a wider survey of life, if only on the surface, is 
given in his books. By birth, Smollett was of the 
gentry; but by the time he was twenty he had seen 
service as Surgeon's Mate in the British navy, and 
his after career as Tory Editor, at times in prison, 
literary man and traveler who visited many lands and 
finally, like Fielding, died abroad in Italy, was check- 
ered enough to give him material and to spare for 
the changeful bustle, so rife with action and excite- 
ment, of his four principal stories. Like the Amer- 
ican Cooper, he drew upon his own experiences for 
his picture of the navy; and like a later American, 
Dr. Holmes, was a physician who could speak by the 
card of that side of life. 

Far more closely than Fielding he followed the 
" Gil Bias " model, dependirtg for interest primarily 
upon adventures by the way, moving accidents by 
flood and field. He declares, in fact, his intention 



SMOLLETT, STERNE AND OTHERS 75 

to use Le Sage as a literary father and he translated 
" Gil Bias." In striking contrast, too, with Fielding 
is the interpretation of life one gets from his books; 
with the author of " Tom Jones " we feel, what we 
do in greater degree with Shakespeare and Balzac, 
that the personality of the fiction-maker is healthily 
merged in his characters, in the picture of life. But 
in the case of Dr. Smollett, there is a strongly in- 
dividual satiric bias: less of that largeness which 
sees the world from an unimplicated coign of vant- 
age, whence the open-eyed, wise-minded spectator 
finds it a comedy breeding laughter under thoughtful 
brows. We seem to be getting not so much scenes 
of life as an author's setting of the scene for his own 
private reasons. Such is at least the occasional 
effect of Smollett. Also is there more of bitterness, 
of savagery in him: and where Fielding was broad 
and racily frank in his handling of delicate themes, 
this fellow is indecent with a kind of hardness and 
brazenness which are amazing. The difference be- 
tween plain-speaking and unclean speaking could 
hardly be better illustrated. It should be added, in 
justice, that even Smollett is rarely impure with the 
alluring saliency of certain modern fiction. 

In the first story, " The Adventures of Roderick 
Random " (the cumbrous full titles of earlier fiction 
are for apparent reasons frequently curtailed in the 
present treatment), published when the author was 
twenty-seven, he avails himself of a residence of some 



76 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

years in Jamaica to depict life in that quarter of 
the world at a time when the local color had the 
charm of novelty. The story is often credited with 
being autobiographic, as a novelist's first book is 
likely to be; since, by popular belief, there is one 
story in all of us, namely, our own. Its description 
of the hero's hard knocks does, indeed, suggest the 
fate of a man so stormily quarrelsome throughout 
his days : for this red-headed Scot, this " hack of 
genius," as Henley picturesquely calls him, was 
naturally a fighting man and, whether as man or 
author, attacks or repels sharply: there is nothing 
uncertain in the effect he makes. His loud vigor 
is as pronounced as that of a later Scot like Carlyle ; 
yet he stated long afterward that the likeness be- 
tween himself and Roderick was slight and super- 
ficial. The fact that the tale is written in the first 
person also helps the autobiographic theory: that 
method of story-making always lends a certain cred- 
ence to the narrative. The scenes shift from west- 
ern Scotland to the streets of London, thence to 
the West Indies: and the interest (the remark ap- 
plies to all Smollett's work) lies in just three things 
— adventure, diversity of character, and the real- 
istic picture of contemporary life — especially that 
of the navy on a day when, if Smollett is within 
hailing distance of the facts, it was terribly corrupt. 
Too much credit can hardly be given him for first 
using, so effectively too, the professional sea-life of 



DEVELOPMENTS 77 

his country: a motive so richly productive since 
through Marryat down to Dana, Herman Melville, 
Clark Russell and many other favorite writers, both 
British and American. In Smollett's hands, it is 
a strange muddle of religion, farce and smut, but 
set forth with a vivid particularity and a gusto of 
high spirits which carry the reader along, w^illy-nilly. 
Such a book might be described by the advertisement 
of an old inn : " Here is entertainment for man and 
beast." As to characterization, if a genius for it 
means the creation of figures which linger in the 
familiar memory of mankind, Smollett must perforce 
be granted the faculty; here in his first book are 
Tom Bowling and Strap — to name two — the one 
(like Richardson's Lovelace) naming a type: the 
other standing for the country innocent, the meek 
fidus Achates, both as good as anything of the same 
class in Fielding. The Welsh mate, Mr. Morgan, 
for another of the sailor sort, is also excellent. The 
judgment may be eccentric, but for myself the char- 
acter parts in Smollett's dramas seem for variety 
and vividness often superior to those of Fielding. 
The humor at its best is very telling. The portraits, 
or caricatures, of living folk added to the story's 
immediate vogue, but injure it as a permanent con- 
tribution to fiction. 

A fair idea of the nature of the attractions offered 
(and at the same time a clear indication of the sort 
of fiction manufactured by the doughty doctor) may 



78 MASTERS OF TFIE ENGLISH NOVEL 

be gleaned from the following precis — Smollett's own 
— of Chapter XXXVIII : " I get up and crawl into 
a barn where I am in danger of perishing through 
the fear of the country people. Their inhumanity. 
I am succored by a reputed witch. Her story. Her 
advice. She recommends me as a valet to a single 
lady whose character she explains." This promises 
pretty fair reading: of course, we wish to read on 
and to learn more of that single lady and the hero's 
relation to her. Such a motive, which might be 
called, " The Mistakes of a Night," with details too 
crude and physical to allow of discussion, is often 
overworked by Smollett (as, in truth, it is by Field- 
ing, to modern taste) : the eighteenth century had 
not yet given up the call of the Beast in its fiction — 
an element of bawdry was still welcome in the print 
offered reputable folk. 

The style of Smollett in his first fiction, and in 
general, has marked dramatic flavor: his is a gift of 
forthright phrase, a plain, vernacular smack char- 
acterizes his diction. To go back to him now is 
to be surprised perhaps at the racy vigor of so faulty 
a writer and novelist. A page or so of Smollett, 
after a course in present-day popular fiction, reads 
very much like a piece of literature. In this re- 
spect, he seems full of flavor, distinctly of the major 
breed: there is an effect of passing from attenuated 
parlor tricks into the open, when you take him up. 
Here, you can but feel, is a masculine man of 



SMOLLETT, STERNE AND OTHERS 79 

letters, even if it is his fate to play second fiddle to 
Fielding. 

Smollett's initial story was a pronounced success 
with the public — and he aired an arrogant joy and 
pooh-poohed insignificant rivals like Fielding. His 
hand was against every man's when it came to the 
question of literary prowess; and like many authors 
before and since, one of his first acts upon the kind 
reception of " Roderick Random," was to get pub- 
lished his worthless blank-verse tragedy, " The Regi- 
cide," which, refused by Garrick, had till then lan- 
guished in manuscript and was an ugly duckling be- 
loved of its maker. Then came Novel number two, 
" The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle," three years 
after the first: an unequal book, best at its begin- 
ning and end, full of violence, not on the whole 
such good art-work as the earlier fiction, yet very 
fine in spots and containing such additional sea-dogs 
as Commodore Trunnion and Lieutenant Hatchway, 
whose presence makes one forgive much. The orig- 
inal preface contained a scurrilous reference to 
Fielding, against whom he printed a diatribe in a 
pamphlet dated the next year. The hero of the 
story, a handsome ne'er-do-well who has money and 
position to start the world with, encounters plenty of 
adventure in England and out of it, by land and sea. 
There is an episodic book, " Memoirs, supposed to 
be written by a lady of quality," and really giving 
the checkered career of Lady Vane, a fast gentle- 



80 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEi: 

woman of the time, done for pay at her request, 
which is illustrative of the loose state of fictional 
art in its unrelated, lugged-in character: and as well 
of eighteenth century morals in its drastic details. 
We have seen that Fielding was frankly episodic in 
handling a story; Smollett goes him one better: as 
may most notoriously be seen also in the unmen- 
tionable Miss Williams' story in " Roderick Ran- 
dom " — in fact, throughout his novels. Pickle, to 
put it mildly, is not an admirable young man. An 
author's conception of his hero is always in some 
sort a give-away : it expresses his ideals ; that Smol- 
lett's are sufficiently low-pitched, may be seen here. 
Plainly, too, he likes Peregrine, and not so much 
excuses his failings as overlooks them entirely. 

After a two years' interval came " The Adventures 
of Ferdinand, Count Fathom," which was not liked 
by his contemporaries and is now seen to be definitely 
the poorest of the quartette. It is enough to say 
of it that Fathom is an unmitigable scoundrel and the 
story, mixed romance and melodrama, offers the 
reader dust and ashes instead of good red blood. 
It lacks the comic verve of Smollett's typical fiction 
and manipulates virtue and vice in the cut-and-dried 
style of the penny-dreadful. Even its attempts at 
the sensational leave the modern reader, bred on such 
heavenly fare as is proffered by Stevenson and others, 
indifferent-cold. 

It is a pleasure to turn from it to what is gen- 



DEVELOPMENTS 81 

erally conceded to be the best novel he wrote, as it 
is his last : " The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker," 
which appeared nearly twenty years later, when the 
author was fifty years old. " The Adventures of 
Sir Launcelot Graves," written in prison a decade 
earlier, and a poor satire in the vein of Cervantes, 
can be ignored, it falls so much below Smollett's 
main fiction. He had gone for his health's sake to 
Italy and wrote " Humphrey Clinker " at Leghorn, 
completing it only within a few weeks of his death. 
For years he had been degenerating as a writer, his 
physical condition was of the worst: it looked as if 
his life was quite over. Yet, by a sort of leaping-up 
of the creative flame out of the dying embers of the 
hearth, he wrought his masterpiece. 

It was thrown into letter form, Richardson's frame- 
work, and has all of Smollett's earlier power of 
characterization and brusque wit, together with a 
more genial, mellower tone, that of an older man not 
soured but ripened by the years. Some of its main 
scenes are enacted in his native Scotland and pos- 
sibly this meant strength for another Scot, as it 
did for Sir Walter and Stevenson. The kinder in- 
terpretation of humanity in itself makes the novel 
better reading to later taste; so much can not hon- 
estly be said for its plain speaking, for as Henley 
says in language which sounds as if it were borrowed 
from the writer he is describing, " the stinks and 
Hastinesses are done with peculiar gusto." The idea 



82 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

of the story, as usual a pivot around which to re- 
volve a series of adventures, is to narrate how a 
certain bachelor, country gentleman, Matthew 
Bramble, a malade imaginaire, yet good-hearted and 
capable of big laughter — " the most risible misan- 
thrope ever met with," as he is limned by one of 
the persons of the story — travels in England, Wales 
and Scotland in pursuit of health, taking with him 
his family, of whom the main members include his 
sister, Tabitha (and her maid, Jenkins), and his 
nephew, not overlooking the dog. Chowder. Clinker, 
who names the book, is a subsidiary character, merely 
a servant in Bramble's establishment. The crotchety 
Bramble and his acidulous sister, who is a forerunner 
of Mrs. Malaprop in the unreliability of her spelling, 
and Lieutenant Lishmahago, who has been compli- 
mented as the first successful Scotchman in fiction — 
all these are sketched with a verity and in a vein 
of genuine comic invention which have made them 
remembered. Violence, rage, filth — Smollett's beset- 
ting sins — are forgotten or forgiven in a book which 
has so much of the flavor and movement of life. 
The author's medical lore is made good use of in 
the humorous descriptions of poor Bramble's ail- 
ments. Incidentally, the story defends the Scotch 
against the English in such a pronounced way that 
Walpole calls it a " party novel " ; and there is, 
moreover, a pleasant love story interwoven with the 
comedy and burlesque. One feels in leaving this 



SMOLLETT, STERNE AND OTHERS 83 

fiction that with all allowance for his defects, there 
is more danger of undervaluing the author's powers 
and place in the modern Novel than the reverse. 

Fielding and Smollett together set the pace for 
the Novel of blended incident and character: both 
were, as sturdy realists, reactionary from the sen- 
timental analysis of Richardson and express an in- 
stinct contrary to the self-conscious pathos of a 
Sterne or the idyllic romanticism of a Goldsmith. 
Both were directly of influence upon the Novel's 
growth in the nineteenth century : Fielding especially 
upon Thackeray, Smollett upon Dickens. If Smol- 
lett had served the cause in no other way than in 
his strong effect upon the author of " The Pickwick 
Papers," he would deserve well of all critics : how the 
little Copperfield delighted in that scant collection 
of books on his father's bookshelf, where were " Rod- 
erick Random," " Peregrine Pickle " and " Hum- 
phrey Clinker," along with "Tom Jones," "The 
Vicar of Wakefield," "Gil Bias" and "Robinson 
Crusoe " — " a glorious host," says he, " to keep me 
company. They kept alive my fancy and my hope 
of something beyond that time and place." And of 
Smollett's characters, who seem to have charmed him 
more than Fielding's, he declares : " I have seen Tom 
Pipes go clambering up the church-steeple: I have 
watched Strap with the knapsack on his back stop- 
ping to rest himself upon the wicket gate: and I 
know that Commodore Trunnion held that Club with 



84. MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

Mr. Pickle in the parlor of our little village ale 
house." Children are shrewd critics, in their way, 
and what an embryo Charles Dickens likes in fiction 
is not to be slighted. But as we have seen, Smollett 
can base his claims to our sufferance not by indirec- 
tion through Dickens, but upon his worth ; many be- 
sides the later and greater novelist have a liking for 
this racy writer of adventure, and creator of English 
types, who was recognized by Walter Scott as of 
kin to the great in fiction. 

II 

In the fast-developing fiction of the late eighteenth 
century, the possible ramifications of the Novel from 
the parent tree of Richardson enriched it with the 
work of Sterne, Swift and Goldsmith. They added 
imaginative narratives of one sort or another, which 
increased the content of the form by famous things 
and exercised some influence in shaping it. The re- 
mark has in mind " Tristram Shandy," " Gulliver's 
Travels " and " The Vicar of Wakefield." And yet, 
no one of the three was a Novel in the sense in which 
the evolution of the word has been traced, nor yet 
are the authors strictly novelists. 

Laurence Sterne, at once man of the world and 
clergyman, with Rabelais as a model, and himself a 
master of prose, possessing command of humor and 
pathos, skilled in character sketch and essay-phi- 



DEVELOPMENTS B5 

losophy, is not a novelist at all. His aim is not to 
depict the traits or events of contemporary society, 
but to put forth the views of the Reverend Laurence 
Sterne, Yorkshire parson, with many a quaint turn 
and whimsical situation under a thin disguise of 
story-form. Of his two books, " Tristram Shandy " 
and " The Sentimental Journey," unquestionable 
classics, both, in their field, there is no thought of 
plot or growth or objective realization: the former 
is a delightful tour de force in which a born essayist 
deals with the imaginary fortunes of a person he 
makes as interesting before his birth as after it, and 
in passing, sketches some characters dear to pos- 
terity: first and foremost, Uncle Toby and Corporal 
Trim. It is all pure play of wit, fancy and wisdom, 
beneath the comic mask — a very frolic of the mind. 
In the second book the framework is that of the 
travel-sketch and the treatment more objective: a 
fact which, along with its dubious propriety, may 
account for its greater popularity. But much of 
the charm comes, as before, from the writer's touch, 
his gift of style and ability to unloose in the essay 
manner a unique individuality. 

In his life Sterne, like Swift, exhibited most un- 
clerical traits of worldliness and in his work there is 
the refined, suggestive indelicacy, not to say in- 
decency, which we are in the habit nowadays of 
charging against the French, and which is so much 
worse than the bluff, outspoken coarseness of a Field- 



86 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

ing or a Smollett. At times the line between Sterne 
and Charles Lamb is not so easy to draw in that, 
from first to last, the elder is an essayist and humor- 
ist, while the younger has so much of the eighteenth 
century in his feeling and manner. In these modern 
times, when so many essayists appear in the guise 
of fiction-makers, we can see that Sterne is really the 
leader of the tribe: and it is not hard to show how 
neither he nor they are novelists divinely called. 
They (and he) may be great, but it is another great- 
ness. The point is strikingly illustrated by the state- 
ment that Sterne was eight years publishing the 
various parts of " Tristram Shandy," and a man of 
forty-six when he began to do so. Bona fide novels 
are not thus written. Constructively, the work is 
a mad farrago; but the end quite justifies the means. 
Thus, while his place in letters is assured, and the 
touch of the cad in him (Goldsmith called him " the 
blackguard parson") should never blind us to his 
prime merits, his significance for our particular study 
— the study of the modern Novel in its development 
— is comparatively slight. Like all essayists of rank 
he left memorable passages : the world never tires of 
" God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," and 
pays it the high compliment of ascribing it to holy 
writ: nor will the scene where the recording angel 
blots out Uncle Toby's generous oath with a tear, 
fade from the mind; nor that of the same kindly 
gentleman letting go the big fly which has, to his 



SMOLLETT, STERNE AND OTHERS 87 

discomfiture, been buzzing about his nose at dinner: 
" ' Go,' says he, Hfting up the latch and opening his 
hand as he spoke to let it escape. ' Go, poor devil, 
get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? The world 
surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me ' " — 
a touch so modern as to make Sterne seem a century 
later than Fielding. These are among the precious 
places of literature. This eighteenth century di- 
vine has in advance of his day the subtler sensibility 
which was to grow so strong in later fiction : and 
if he be sentimental too, he gives us a sentimentality 
unlike the solemn article of Richardson, because of 
its French grace and its relief of delicious humor. 

Ill 

Swift chronologically precedes Sterne, for in 1726, 
shortly after " Robinson Crusoe " and a good fifteen 
years before " Pamela," he gave the world that 
unique lucubration, " Gulliver's Travels," allegory, 
satire and fairy story all in one. It is certainly 
anything but a novel. One of the giants of English 
letters, doing many things and exhibiting a sardonic 
personality that seems to peer through all his work, 
Swift's contribution to the coming Novel was above 
all the use of a certain grave, realistic manner of 
treating the impossible: a service, however, shared 
with Defoe. He gives us in a matter-of-fact chron- 
icle style the marvelous happenings of Gulliver in 



88 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

Lilliputian land or in that of the Brobdingnagians. 
He and Defoe are to be regarded as pioneers who 
suggested to the literary world, just before the 
Novel's advent, that the attraction of a new form 
and a new method, the exploitation of the truth that, 
" The proper study of mankind is man," could not 
(and should not) kill the love of romance, for the 
good and sufficient reason that romance meant im- 
agination, illusion, charm, poetry. And in due sea- 
son, after the long innings enjoyed by realism with 
its triumphs of analysis and superfaithful transcrip- 
tions of the average life of man, we shall behold the 
change of mood which welcomes back the older appeal 
of fiction. 

IV 

It was the enlargement of this sense of romance 
which Oliver Goldsmith gave his time in that master- 
piece in small, " The Vicar of Wakefield " : his special 
contribution to the plastic variations connected with 
the growing pains of the Novel. Whether regarded 
as poet, essayist, dramatist or story-maker. Dr. Gold- 
smith is one of the best-loved figures of English let- 
ters, as Swift is one of the most terrible. And these 
lovable qualities are nowhere more conspicuous than 
in the idyllic sketch of the country clergyman and 
his family. Romance it deserves to be called, because 
of the delicate idealization in the setting and in the 
portrayal of the Vicar himself — a man who not only 



DEVELOPMENTS 89 

preached God's love, " but first he followed it him- 
self." And yet the book — which, by the bye, was 
published in 1766 just as the last parts of " Tristram 
Shandy " were appearing in print — offers a good 
example of the way in which the more romantic de- 
piction of hfe, in the hands of a master, inevitably 
blends with realistic details, even with a winning 
truthfulness of effect. Some of the romantic charm 
of " The Vicar of Wakefield," we must remember, 
inheres in its sympathetic reproduction of vanished 
manners, etiquette and social grace; a sweet old- 
time grace, a fragrance out of the past, emanates 
from the memory of it if read half a Hfetime ago. 
An elder age is rehabilitated for us by its pages, 
even as it is by the canvases of Romney and Sir 
Joshua. And with this more obvious romanticism 
goes the deeper romanticism that comes from the 
interpretation of humanity, which assumes it to be 
kindly and gentle and noble in the main. Life, made 
up of good and evil as it is, is, nevertheless, seen 
through this affectionate time-haze, worth the living. 
Whatever their individual traits, an air of country 
peace and innocence hovers over the Primrose house- 
hold: the father and mother, the girls, OHvia and 
Sophia, and the two sons, George and Moses, they 
all seem equally generous, credulous and good. We 
feel that the author is living up to an announcement 
in the opening chapter which of itself is a sort of 
promise of the idealized treatment of poor human 



90 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

nature. But into this pretty and perfect scene of 
domestic felicity come trouble and disgrace: the ser- 
pent creeps into the unsullied nest, the villain, Thorn- 
hill, ruins Olivia, their house burns, and the soft- 
hearted, honorable father is haled to prison. There 
is no blinking the darker side of mortal experience. 
And the prison scenes, with their noble teaching with 
regard to penal punishment, showing Goldsmith far 
in advance of his age, add still further to the shad- 
ows. Yet the idealization is there, like an atmos- 
phere, and through it all, shining and serene, is Dr. 
Primrose to draw the eye to the eternal good. We 
smile mayhap at his simplicity but note at the same 
time that his psychology is sound: the influence of 
his sermonizing upon the jailbirds is true to ex- 
perience often since tested. Nor are satiric side- 
strokes in the realistic vein wanting — as in the draw- 
ing of such a high lady of quality as Miss Carolina 
Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs — the very name sending 
our thoughts forward to Thackeray. In the final 
analysis it will be found that what makes the work 
a romance is its power to quicken the sense of the 
attraction, the beauty of simple goodness through 
the portrait of a noble man whose environment is 
such as best to bring out his qualities. Dr. Prim- 
rose is humanity, if not actual, potential: he can be, 
if he never was. A helpful comparison might be 
instituted between Goldsmith's country clergyman 
and Balzac's country doctor in the novel of that 



SMOLLETT, STERNE AND OTHERS 91 

name; another notable attempt at the idealization of 
a typical man of one of the professions. It would 
bring out the difference between the late eighteenth 
and the middle nineteenth centuries, as well as that 
between a great novelist, Balzac, and a great English 
writer. Goldsmith, who yet is not a novelist at all. 
It should detract no whit from one's delight in such 
a work as " The Vicar of Wakefield " to acknowledge 
that its aim is not to depict society as it then ex- 
isted, but to give a pleasurable abstract of human 
nature for the purpose of reconciling us through art 
with life, when lived so sanely, simply and sweetly 
as by Primrose of gentle memory. Seldom has the 
divine quality of the forgiveness of sins been por- 
trayed with more salutary effect than in the scene 
where the erring and errant Olivia is taken back to the 
heart of her father — just as the hard-headed landlady 
would drive her forth with the words : " ' Out I say ! 
Pack out this moment ! tramp, thou impudent strum- 
pet, or I'll give thee a mark that won't be better for 
this three months. What ! you trumpery, to come 
and take up an honest house without cross or coin to 
bless yourself with ! Come along, I say.' " 

" I flew to her rescue while the woman was dragging 
her along by her hair, and I caught the dear forlorn 
wretch in my arms. ' Welcome, anyway welcome, 
my dearest lost one, my treasure, to your poor old 
father's bosom. Though the vicious forsake thee, 
there is yet one in the world who will never forsake 



92 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

thee; though thou hadst ten thousand crimes to 
answer for, he will forget them all ! ' " 

Set beside this father the fathers of Clarissa and 
Sophia Western, and you have the difference between 
the romance and realism that express opposite moods ; 
the mood that shows the average and the mood that 
shows the best. For portraiture, then, rather than 
plot, for felicity of manner and sweetness of interpre- 
tation we praise such a work; — qualities no less 
precious though not so distinctively appertaining 
to the Novel. 

It may be added, for a minor point, that the Novel 
type as already developed had assumed a conventional 
length which would preclude " The Vicar of Wake- 
field " from its category, making it a sketch or nov- 
elette. The fiction-makers rapidly came to realize 
that for their particular purpose — to portray a com- 
plicated piece of contemporary life — more leisurely 
movement and hence greater space are necessary to 
the best result. To-day any fiction under fifty thou- 
sand words would hardly be called a novel in the 
proper sense, — except in publishers' advertisements. 
Goldsmith's story does not exceed such limits. 

Therefore, although we may like it all the more 
because it is a romantic sketch rather than a novel 
proper, we must grant that its share in the eighteenth 
century shaping of the form is but ancillary. The 
fact that the book upon its appearance awakened 
no such interest as waited upon the fiction of Rich- 



DEVELOPMENTS 93 

ardson or Fielding a few years before, may be taken 
to mean that the taste was still towards the more 
photographic portrayals of average contemporary 
humanity. Several editions, to be sure, were issued 
the year of its publication, but without much finan- 
cial success, and contemporary criticism found little 
remarkable in this permanent contribution to English 
literature. Later, it was beloved both of the elect 
and the general. Goethe's testimony to the strong 
and wholesome effect of the book upon him in his 
formative period, is remembered. Dear old Dr. 
Johnson too believed in the story, for, summoned to 
Goldsmith's lodging by his friend's piteous appeal 
for help, he sends a guinea in advance and on arrival 
there, finds his colleague in high choler because, for- 
sooth, his landlady has arrested him for his rent: 
whereupon Goldsmith (who had already expended 
part of the guinea in a bottle of Madeira) displays a 
manuscript, — '* a novel ready for the press," as we 
read in Boswell ; and Johnson — " I looked into it and 
saw its merit," says he — goes out and sells it for sixty 
pounds, whereupon Goldsmith paid off his obligation, 
and with his mercurial Irish nature had a happy even- 
ing, no doubt, with his chosen cronies ! It is a sordid, 
humorous-tragic Grub Street beginning for one of 
the little immortals of letters — so many of which, 
alack! have a similar birth. 

Certain other authors less distinguished than these, 
produced fiction of various kinds which also had some 



94 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

influence in the development, and further illustrate 
the tendency of the Novel to become a pliable medium 
for literary expression; a sort of net wherein divers 
fish might be caught. Dr. Johnson, essayist, critic, 
coffee-house dictator, published the same year that 
Sterne's " Tristram Shandy " began to appear, his 
" Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia " ; a stately elegiac 
on the vanity of human pleasures, in which the Prince 
leaves his idyllic home and goes into the world to test 
its shams, only to return to his kingdom with the 
sad knowledge that it is the better part of wisdom 
in this vale of tears to prepare for heaven. Of 
course this is fiction only in seeming and by courtesy, 
almost as far removed from the Novel as the same 
author's mammoth dictionary or Lives of the Poets. 
It has Richardson's method of moralizing, while lack- 
ing that writer's power of studying humanity in its 
social relations. The sturdy genius of Dr. Johnson 
lay in quite other directions. 

Richardson's sentimentality, too, was carried on 
by MacKenzie in his " Man of Feeling " already men- 
tioned as the favorite tear-begetter of its time, the 
novel which made the most prolonged attack upon 
the lachrymosal gland. But it is only fair to this 
author to add that there was a welcome note of phi- 
lanthropy in his story — in spite of its mawkishness; 
his appeal for the under dog in great cities is a fore- 
cast of the humanitarianism to become rampant in 
later fiction. 



SMOLLETT, STERNE AND OTHERS 95 

Again, the seriousness which has always, in one 
guise or the other, underlain English fiction, soon 
crystalized in the contemporary eighteenth century 
novelists into an attempt to preach this or that by 
propaganda in story-form. William Godwin, whose 
relations as father-in-law to Shelley gives him a not 
altogether agreeable place in our memory, was a 
leader in this tendency with several fictions, the best 
known and most readable being " Caleb Williams " : 
radical ideas, social, political and religious, were 
mooted by half a dozen earnest-souled authors whose 
w^orks are now regarded as links in the chain of de- 
velopment — missing links for most readers of fiction, 
since their literary quality is small. In later days, 
this kind of production was to be called purpose 
fiction and condemned or applauded according to 
individual taste and the esthetic and vital value of 
the book. When the moralizing overpowered all else, 
we get a book like that friend of childhood, " Sanford 
and Merton," which Thomas Day perpetrated in the 
year of grace 1783. Few properly reared boys of 
a generation ago escaped this literary indiscretion: 
its Sunday School solemnity, its distribution of life's 
prizes according to the strictest moral tests, had a 
sort of bogey fascination ; it was much in vogue long 
after Day's time, indeed down to within our own 
memories. Perhaps it is still read and relished in 
innocent corners of the earth. In any case it is one 
of the outcomes of the movement just touched upon. 



96 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

At present, being more ennuye in our tastes for 
fiction than were our forefathers, and the pretence 
of piety being less a convention, we inchne to insist 
more firmly that the pill at least be sugar-coated, — if 
indeed we submit to physic at all. 

There was also a tendency during the second half 
of the eighteenth century — very Hkely only half 
serious and hardly more than a literary fad — toward 
the romance of mystery and horror. Horace Wal- 
pole, the last man on earth from whom one would 
expect the romantic and sentimental, produced in 
his " Castle of Otranto " such a book ; and Mrs. 
RadcHfFe's "The Mystery of Udolpho " (standing 
for numerous others) manipulated the stage machi- 
nery of this pseudo-romantic revival and reaction; 
moonlit castles, medieval accessories, weird sounds 
and lights at the dread midnight hour, — ^an attack 
upon the reader's nerves rather than his sensibilities, 
much the sort of paraphernalia employed with a 
more spiritual purpose and effect in our own day 
by the dramatist, Maeterlinck. Beckford's " Va- 
thek " and Lewis' " The Monk " are variations upon 
this theme, which for a while was very popular and 
is decidedly to be seen in the work of the first noveHst 
upon American soil, Charles Brockden Brown, whose 
somber "Wieland," read with the Radcliffe school 
in mind, will reveal its probable parentage. We 
have seen how the movement was happily satirized by 
its natural enemy, Jane Austen. Few more enjoy- 



DEVELOPMENTS 97 

able things can be quoted than this conversation from 
" Northanger Abbey " between two typical young 
ladies of the time: — 

" ' But, my dearest Catherine, what have you been 
doing with yourself all this morning ? Have you gone 
on with Udolpho ? ' 

" ' Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke ; 
and I am got to the black veil.' 

"'Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh! I 
would not tell you what is behind the black veil for 
the world ! Are you not wild to know ? ' 

" ' Oh ! yes, quite ; what can it be? But do not tell 
me ; I would not be told upon any account. I know it 
must be a skeleton ; I am sure it is Laurentina's skele- 
ton. Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should 
like to spend my whole life in reading it, I assure 
you ; if it had not been to meet you, I would not have 
come away from it for all the world.' 

" ' Dear creature ! how much I am obliged to 
you ; and when you have finished Udolpho, we will 
read the Italian together; and I have made out 
a Hst of ten or twelve more of the same kind for 
you.' 

" ' Have you, indeed ! How glad I am ! What are 
they all?' 

*' ' I will read you their names directly ; here they 
are in my pocket-book. " Castle of Wolfenbach," 
" Clermont," " Mysterious Warnings," " Necro- 
mancer of the Black Forest," "Midnight Bell," 



98 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

" Orphan of the Rhine," and " Horrid Mysteries." 
Those will last us some time.' 

" ' Yes ; pretty well ; but are they all horrid ? Are 
you sure they are all horrid ^ ' 

" ' Yes, quite sure ; for a particular friend of mine, 
a Miss Andrews, a sweet girl, one of the sweetest 
creatures in the world, has read every one of them.' " 

After all, human nature is constant, independent 
of time; and fashions social, mental, literary, return 
like fashions in feminine headgear ! Two club women 
were coming from a city play house after hearing 
a particularly lugubrious drama of Ibsen's, and one 
was overheard exclaiming to the other : " O isn't 
Ibsen just lovely! He does so take the hope out 
of life ! " 

Yet the tendency of eighteenth century fiction, 
with its handling of the bizarre and sensational, its 
use of occult effects of the Past and Present, was 
but an eddy in a current which was setting strong 
and steadily toward the realistic portrayal of con- 
temporary society. 

One other tendency, expressive of a lighter mood, 
an attempt to represent society a la modCy is also 
to be noted during this half century so crowded with 
interesting manifestations of a new spirit; and they 
who wrote it were mostly women. It is a remarkable 
fact that for the fifty years between Sterne and 
Scott, the leading novelists were of that sex, four of 
whom at least, Burney, RadclifFe, Edgeworth and 



SMOLLETT, STERNE AND OTHERS 99 

Austen, were of importance. Of this group the lively 
Fanny Burney is the prophet ; she is the first woman 
novelist of rank. Her " Evelina," with its somewhat 
starched gentility and simpering sensibility, was once 
a book to conjure with; it fluttered the literary dove- 
cotes in a way not so easy to comprehend to-day. 
Yet Dr. Johnson loved his " little Burney " and 
greatly admired her work, and there are entertaining 
and without question accurate pictures of the fash- 
ionable London at the time of the American Revolu- 
tion drawn by an observer of the inner circle, in her 
" Evelina " and " Cecilia " ; one treasures them for 
their fresh spirit and lively humor, nor looks in them 
for the more serious elements of good fiction. She 
contributes, modestly, to that fiction to which we go 
for human documents. No one who has been ad- 
mitted to the privileges of Miss Burney's Diary can 
fail to feel that a woman who commands such idiom 
is easily an adept in the realistic dialogue of the 
novel. Here, even more than in her own novels or 
those of Richardson and Fielding, we hear the exact 
syllable and intonation of contemporary speech. 
" Mr. Cholmondeley is a clergyman," she writes, 
" nothing shining either in person or manners but 
rather somewhat grim in the first and glum in the 
last." And again : " Our confab was interrupted 
by the entrance of Mr. King," or yet again : " The 
joke is, the people speak as if they were afraid of 
me, instead of my being afraid of them. . .... 



100 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

Next morning, Mrs. Thrale asked me if I did not 
want to see Mrs. Montagu.'^ I truly said I should 
be the most insensible of animals not to like to see 
our sex's glory." It is hard to realize that this was 
penned in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty 
years ago, so modern is its sound. 

A great writer, with a wider scope and a more 
incisive satire, is Maria Edgeworth, whose books 
take us over into the nineteenth century. The 
lighter, more frivolous aspects of English high so- 
ciety are admirably portrayed in her " Belinda " 
and eight or ten other tales: and she makes a still 
stronger claim to permanent remembrance in such 
studies of Irish types, whether in England or on 
the native soil, as " The Absentee " and " Castle 
Rackrent." I venture the statement that even the 
jaded novel reader of to-day will find on a perusal 
of either of these capital stories that Miss Edge- 
worth makes literature, and that a pleasure not a 
penance is in store. She first in English fiction ex- 
ploited the better-class Irishman at home and her 
scenes have historic value. Some years later, Susan 
Terrier, who enjoyed the friendship of Scott, wrote 
under the stimulus of Maria Edgeworth's example 
a series of clever studies of Scotch life, dashed with 
decided humor and done with true observation. 

These women, with their quick eye and facile abil- 
ity to report what they saw, and also their ease of 
manner which of itself seems like a social gift, were 



DEVELOPMENTS 101 

but the prelude to the work so varied, gifted and 
vastly influential, which the sex was to do in the 
modern Novel; so that, at present, in an open field 
and no favors given, they are honorable rivals of 
men, securing their full share of public favor. And 
the Enghsh Novel, written by so many tentatively 
during these fifty years when the form was a-shaping, 
culminates at the turn of the century in two con- 
trasted authors compared with whom all that went 
before seems but preparatory; one a man, the other 
a woman, who together express and illustrate most 
conveniently for this study the main movements of 
modern fiction, — romance and realism, — the instinct 
for truth and the instinct for beauty ; not necessarily 
an antagonism, as we shall have ample occasion to 
see, since truth, rightly defined, is only " beauty 
seen from another side." It hardly needs to add that 
these two novelists are Jane Austen and Walter 
Scott. 



CHAPTER V 

REALISM: JANE AUSTEN 

It has been said that Miss Austen came nearer 
to showing, life as it is, — the Hfe she knew and 
chose to depict, — than any other novehst of Eng- 
lish race. In other words, she is a princess among 
the truth-tellers. Whether or not this claim can 
be substantiated, it is sure that, writing practically 
half a century after Richardson and Fielding, she 
far surpassed those pioneers in the exquisite and easy 
verisimilitude of her art. Nay, we can go further 
and say that nobody has reproduced life with a 
more faithful accuracy, that yet was not photography 
because it gave the pleasure proper to art, than this 
same Jane Austen, spinster, well-born and well-bred: 
in her own phrase, an " elegant female " of the Eng- 
lish past. Scott's famous remark can not be too 
often quoted : " That young lady had a talent for 
describing the movements and feelings of characters 
of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful 
I ever met with." 

If you look on the map at the small Southern 
county of Hampshire, you will see that the town 
of Steventon lies hard by Selborne, another name 

103 



REALISM: JANE AUSTEN 103 

which the naturalist White has made pleasant to the 
ear. Throughout her forty-two years of life — she 
was born the year of American revolution and died 
shortly after Scott had begun his Waverley series — 
she was a country-woman in the best sense : a clergy- 
man's daughter identified with her neighborhood, dig- 
nified and private in her manner of existence, her 
one sensational outing being a four years' residence 
in the fashionable watering-place of Bath, where 
Beau Nash once reigned supreme and in our day, 
Beaucaire has been made to rebuke Lady Mary Car- 
lisle for her cold patrician pride. Quiet she lived and 
died, nor w^as she reckoned great in letters by her 
contemporaries. She wrote on her lap with others 
in the room, refused to take herself seriously and in 
no respect was like the authoress who is kodaked at 
the writing-desk and chronicled in her movements by 
land and sea. She was not the least bit " literary." 
Fanny Burney, who had talent to Jane Austen's 
genius, was in a blaze of social recognition, a petted 
darling of the town, where the other walked in rural 
ways and unnoted of the world, wrote novels that 
were to make literary history. Such are the revenges 
of the whirligig. Time. 

Austen's indestructible reputation is founded on 
half a dozen pieces of fiction: the best, and best 
known, " Sense and Sensibility " and " Pride and 
Prejudice," although " Mansfield Park," " Emma," 
" Northanger Abbey " and " Persuasion " (in order 



104 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

of publication but not of actual composition) are 
all of importance to the understanding and enjoy- 
ment of her, and her evenness of performance, on the 
whole, is remarkable. The earlier three of these 
books were written by Miss Austen when a young 
woman in the twenties, but published much later, and 
were anonymous — an indication of her tendency to 
take her authorship as an aside. Two of them ap- 
peared posthumously. Curiously, " Northanger 
Abbey," that capital hit at the RadclifFe romanticism, 
and first written of her stories, was disposed of to a 
publisher when the writer was but three and twenty, 
yet was not printed until she had passed away nearly 
twenty years later, — a sufficient proof of her unpopu- 
larity from the mercantile point of view. 

Here is one of the paradoxes of literature: this 
gentlewoman dabbling in a seemingly amateur fashion 
in letters, turns out to be the ablest novelist of her 
sex and race, one of the very few great craftsmen, 
one may say, since art is no respector of sex. Jane 
Austen is the best example in the whole range of 
English literature of the wisdom of knowing your 
limitations and cultivating your own special plot of 
ground. She offers a permanent rebuke to those 
who (because of youth or a failure to grasp the 
meaning of life) fancy that the only thing worth 
while lies on the other side of the Pyrenees ; when 
all the while at one's own back-door blooms the 
miracle. She had a clear-eyed comprehension of her 



REALISM: JANE AUSTEN 105 

own restrictions ; and possessed that power of self- 
criticism which some truly great authors lack. She 
has herself given us the aptest comment ever made 
on her books : speaking of the " little bit of ivory two 
inches wide on which she worked with a brush so 
fine as to produce little effect after much labor " ; — 
a judgment hardly fair as to the interest she arouses, 
but nevertheless absolutely descriptive of the plus 
and minus of her gift. 

Miss Austen knew the genteel life of the upper 
middle class Hampshire folk, " the Squirearchy and 
the upper professional class," as Professor Saints- 
bury expresses it, down to the ground — knew it as 
a sympathetic onlooker slightly detached (she never 
married), yet not coldly aloof but a part of it as 
devoted sister and maiden aunt, and friend-in-general 
to the community. She could do two things which 
John Ruskin so often lauded as both rare and diffi- 
cult : see straight and then report accurately ; a 
literary Pre-Raphaelite, be it noted, before the term 
was coined. It not only came natural to her to 
tell the truth about average humanity as she saw 
it ; she could not be deflected from her calling. Win- 
ning no general recognition during her life-time, she 
was not subjected to the temptations of the popular 
novelist; but she had her chance to go wrong, for 
it is recorded how that the Librarian to King George 
the Third, an absurd creature yclept Clark, informed 
the authoress that his Highness admired her works, 



106 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

and suggested that in view of the fact that Prince 
Leonard was to marry the Princess Charlotte, Miss 
Austen should indite " An historical romance illustra- 
tive of the august house of Coburg " To which, 
Miss Jane, with a humor and good-sense quite in 
character (and, it may be feared, not appreciated 
by the recipient) : " I could not sit down to write a 
serious romance under any other motive than amuse- 
ment to save my life ; and if it were indispensable for 
me to keep it up, and never relax into laughter at 
myself and other people, I am sure I should be hung 
before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must 
keep to my own style and go on in my own way." 

There is scarce a clearer proof of genius than this 
ability to strike out a path and keep to it : in striking 
contrast with the weak wobbling so often shown in 
the desire to follow literary fashion or be complaisant 
before the suggestion of the merchants of letters. 

All her novels are prophetic of what was long to 
rule, in their slight framework of fable ; the handling 
of the scenes by the way, the characterization, the 
natural dialogue, the vraisemblance of setting, the 
witty irony of observation, these are the elements of 
interest. Jane Austen's plots are mere tempests 
in tea-pots; yet she does not go to the extreme of 
the plotless fiction of the present. She has a story 
to tell, as Trollope would say, and knows how to 
tell it in such a way as to subtract from it every ounce 
of value. There is a clear kernel of idea in each 



REALISM: JANE AUSTEN 107 

and every one of her tales. Thus, in " Sense and 
Sensibility," we meet two sisters who stand for the 
characteristics contrasted in the title, and in the 
fortunes of Mariane, whose flighty romanticism is 
cured so that she makes a sensible marriage after 
learning the villainy of her earlier lover and finding 
that foolish sentimentalism may well give way to the 
informing experiences of life, — the thesis, satirically 
conveyed though with more subtlety than in the 
earlier " Northanger Abbey," proclaims the folly of 
young-girl sentimentality and hysteria. In " Pride 
and Prejudice," ranked by many as her masterpiece, 
Darcy, with his foolish hauteur, his self-consciousness 
of superior birth, is temporarily blind to the worth 
of Elizabeth, who, on her part, does not see the good 
in him through her sensitiveness to his patronizing 
attitude; as the course of development brings them 
together in a happy union, the lesson of toleration, 
of mutual comprehension, sinks into the mind. The 
reader realizes the pettiness of the worldly wisdom 
which blocks the way of joy. As we have said, 
" Northanger Abbey " speaks a wise word against the 
abuse of emotionalism; it tells of the experiences of 
a flighty Miss, bred on the " Mysteries of Udolpho " 
style of literature, during a visit to a country house 
where she imamned all the medieval romanticism 
incident to that school of fiction, — aided and abetted 
by such innocuous helps as a storm without and a 
lonesome chamber within doors. Of the later 



108 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

stories, " Mansfield Park " asks us to remember what 
it is to be poor and reared among rich relations; 
" Emma " displays a reverse misery : the rich young 
woman whose character is exposed to the adulations 
and shams incident upon her position ; while in " Per- 
suasion," there is yet another idea expressed by and 
through another type of girl ; she who has fallen into 
the habit of allowing herself to be over-ridden and 
used by friends and family. — There is something all 
but Shaksperian in that story's illustration of " the 
uncertainty of all human events and calculations," 
as she herself expresses it: Anne Eliot's radical vic- 
tory is a moral triumph yet a warning withal. And 
in each book, the lesson has been conveyed with 
the unobtrusive indirection of fine art; the story is 
ever first, we are getting fiction not lectures. These 
novels adorn truth; they show what literature can 
effect by the method of much-in-little. 

There is nothing sensational in incident or com- 
plication: as with Richardson, an elopement is the 
highest stretch of external excitement Miss Austen 
vouchsafes. Yet all is drawn so beautifully to scale, 
as in such a scene as that of the quarrel and estrange- 
ment of Elizabeth and Darcy in " Pride and Preju- 
dice," that the effect is greater than in the case of 
many a misused opportunity where the events are 
earth-shaking in import. The situation means so 
much to the participants, that the reader becomes 
sympathetically involved. After all, importance in 



REALISM: JANE AUSTEN 109 

fiction is exactly like importance in life; important 
to whom? the philosopher asks. The relativity of 
things human is a wholesome theory for the artist 
to bear in mind. Even as the most terrific cataclysm 
on this third planet from the sun in a minor system, 
makes not a ripple upon Mars, so the most infini- 
tesimal occurrence in eighteenth century Hampshire 
may seem of account, — if only a master draws the 
picture. 

Not alone by making her characters thoroughly 
alive and interesting does Miss Austen effect this 
result: but by her way of telling the tale as well; 
by a preponderance of dialogue along with clear 
portraiture she actually gets an effect that is dra- 
matic. Scenes from her books are staged even to 
the present day. She found this manner of dia- 
logue with comparative parsimony of description and 
narration, to be her true method as she grew as a 
fiction-maker : the early unpublished story " Susan," 
and the first draught of " Sense and Sensibility," 
had the epistolary form of Richardson, the more 
undramatic nature of which is self-evident. As for 
characterization itself, she is with the few: she has 
added famous specimens — men and women both — -to 
the natural history of fiction. To think of but one 
book, " Pride and Prejudice," what an inimitable 
study of a foolish woman is Mrs. Bennett! Who 
has drawn the insufferable patroness more vividly 
than in a Lady Catherine de Bourgh! And is not 



110 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

the sycophant clergyman hit off to the life in Mr. 
Collins! Looking to the stories as a group, are 
not her heroines, with Anne Eliot perhaps at their 
head, wonderful for quiet attraction and truth, for 
distinctness, charm and variety? Her personages 
are all observed; she had the admirable good sense 
not to go beyond her last. She had every opportunity 
to see the county squire, the baronet puffed up with 
a sense of his own importance, the rattle and rake 
of her day, the tuft hunter, the gentleman scholar, 
and the retired admiral (her two brothers had that 
rank) — and she wisely decided to exhibit these and 
other types familiar to her locality and class, instead 
of drawing on her imagination or trying to extend 
by guess-work her social purview. Her women in 
general, whether satiric and unpleasant like Mrs. 
Norris in " Mansfield Park " or full of winning qual- 
ities like Catherine Moreland and Anne Eliot, are 
drawn with a sureness of hand, an insight, a complete 
comprehension that cannot be over-praised. Jane 
Austen's heroines are not only superior to her heroes 
(some of whom do not get off scot-free from the 
charge of priggishness) but they excel the female 
characterization of all English novelists save only 
two or three, — one of them being Hardy. Her char- 
acters were so real to herself, that she made state- 
ments about them to her family as if they were actual, 
— a habit which reminds of Balzac. 

The particular angle from which she looked on 



REALISM: JANE AUSTEN 111 

life was the satirical: therefore, her danger is ex- 
aggeration, caricature. Yet she yielded surprisingly 
little, and her reputation for faithful transcripts 
from reality, can not now be assailed. Her detached, 
whimsical attitude of scrutinizing the little cross- 
section of life she has in hand, is of the very essence 
of her charm: hers is that wit which is the humor 
of the mind: something for inward smiling, though 
the features may not change. Her comedy has in 
this way the unerring thrust and the amused tolerance 
of a Moliere whom her admirer Macaulay should 
have named rather than Shakspere when wishing 
to compliment her by a comparison ; with her manner 
of representation and her view of life in mind, one 
reverts to Meredith's acute description of the spirit 
that inheres in true comedy. " That slim, feasting 
smile, shaped like the longbow, was once a big round 
satyr's laugh, that flung up the brows like a fortress 
lifted by gunpowder. The laugh will come again, 
but it will be of the order of the smile, finely tempered, 
showing sunlight of the mind, mental richness rather 
than noisy enormity. Its common aspect is one of 
unsolicitous observation, as if surveying a full field 
and having leisure to dart on its chosen morsels, 
without any flattering eagerness. Men's future upon 
earth does not attract it; their honesty and shapeli- 
ness in the present does ; and whenever they were out 
of proportion, overthrown, aff'ected, pretentious, 
bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically del- 



112 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

icate; whenever it sees them self-deceired or hood- 
winked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting into 
vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning short- 
sightedly, plotting dementedly ; whenever they are ati 
variance with their professions, and violate the un- 
written but perceptible laws binding them in con- 
sideration one to another; whenever they offend 
sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or 
mined with conceit, individually or in the bulk — the 
Spirit overhead will look humanely malign and cast 
an oblique light on them, followed by volleys of 
silvery laughter. That is the Comic Spirit." 

If the " silvery laughter " betimes sounds a bit 
sharp and thinly feminine, what would you have? 
Even genius must be subject to the defect of its 
quality. Still, it must be confessed that this attitude 
of the artist observer is broken in upon a little in 
the later novels, beginning with " Mansfield Park," 
by a growing tendency to moral on the time, a 
tendency that points ominously to didacticism. 
There is something of the difference in Jane Austen 
between early and late, that we shall afterwards 
meet in that other great woman novelist, George 
Eliot. One might push the point too far, but it is 
fair to make it. 

We may also inquire — trying to see the thing 
freshly, with independence, and to get away from 
the mere handing-on of a traditional opinion — if 
Jane Austen's character-drawing, so far-famed for 



REALISM: JANE AUSTEN 113 

its truth, does not at times o'erstep the modesty of 
Nature. Gold^vin Smith, in his biography of her, 
is quite right in pointing out that she unquestionably 
overdraws her types : Mr. Collins is at moments almost 
a reminder of Uriah Heap for oily submissiveness : Sir 
Walter Eliot's conceit goes so far he seems a theory 
more than a man, a " humor " in the Ben Jonson 
sense. So, too, the valetudinarianism of Mr. Wood- 
house, like that of Smollett's Bramble, is something 
strained; so is Lady de Bourgh's pride and General 
Tilney's tyranny. Critics are fond of violent con- 
trasts and to set over against one another authors 
so unlike, for example, as Miss Austen and Dickens 
is a favorite occupation. Also is it convenient to 
put a tag on every author: a mask reading realist, 
romanticist, psychologue, sensation-monger, or some 
such designation, and then hold him to the name. 
Thus, in the case of Austen it is a temptation to 
call her the greatest truth-teller among novelists, and 
so leave her. But, as a matter of fact, great as 
realist and artist as she was, she does not hesitate 
at that heightening of effect which insures clearer 
seeing, longer remembering and a keener pleasure. 
Perhaps she is in the broad view all the better artist 
because of this: a thought sadly forgotten by the 
extreme veritlsts of our day. It is the business of 
art to improve upon Nature. 

Again the reader of Jane Austen must expect to 
find her with the limitation of her time and place: 



114 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

it is, frankly, a dreadfully contracted view of the 
world she represents, just for the reason that it is 
the view of her Hampshire gentry in the day of the 
third George. The ideals seem low, narrow; they 
lack air and light. Woman's only role is marriage ; 
female propriety chokes originality; money talks, 
family places individuals, and the estimate of sex- 
relations is intricately involved with these eidola. 
There is little sense of the higher and broader issues : 
the spiritual restrictions are as definite as the social 
and geographical: the insularity is magnificent. It 
all makes you think of Tennyson's lines : 

" They take the rustic cackle of their burg 
For the great wave that echoes round the world ! " 

Hence, one of the bye-products of Miss Austen's 
books is their revelation of hide-bound class-distinc- 
tion, the not seldom ugly parochialism — ^the utili- 
tarian aims of a circle of highly respectable English 
country folk during the closing years of the eight- 
eenth century. The opening sentence of her master- 
piece reads : " It is a truth universally acknowledged 
that a single man in possession of a good fortune 
must be in want of a wife." Needless to say that 
" universally " here is applicable to a tiny area of 
earth observed by a most charming spinster, at a 
certain period of society now fast fading into a 
dim past. But the sentence might serve fairly well 
as a motto for all her work: every plot she con- 



REALISM: JANE AUSTEN 115 

celved is firm-based upon this as a major premise, 
and the particular feminine deduction from those 
words may be found in the following taken from an- 
other work, " Mansfield Park " : " Being now in her 
twenty-first year, Maria Bertram was beginning to 
think marriage a duty ; and as a marriage with Mr. 
Rushford would give her the enjoyment of a larger 
income than her father's, as well as insure her the 
house in town, which was now a prime object, it 
became by the same rule of moral obligation, her 
evident duty to marry Mr. Rushford if she could." 
The egocentric worldliness of this is superb. The 
author, it may be granted, has a certain playful 
satire in her manner here and elsewhere, when setting 
forth such views: yet it seems to be fair to her to 
say that, taking her fiction as a whole, she contentedly 
accepts this order of things and builds upon it. She 
and her world exhibit not only worldliness but that 
" other-worldliness " which is equally self-centered 
and materialistic. Jane Austen is a highly enjoy- 
able mondalne. To compare her gamut: with that 
of George Eliot or George Meredith is to appreciate 
how much has happened since in social and individual 
evolution. The wide social sympathy that throbs 
in modern fiction is hardly born. 

In spite, too, of the thorough good breeding of this 
woman writer, the primness even of her outlook upon 
the world, there is plain speaking in her books, even 
touches of coarseness that are but the echo of the 



116 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

rankness which abounds in the Fielding-Smollett 
school. Happily, it is a faint one. 

Granting the slightness of her plots and their fam- 
ily likeness, warm praise is due for the skill with 
which they are conducted; they are neatly articu- 
lated, the climactic effect is, as a rule, beautifully 
graduated and sure in its final force: the multitude 
of littles which go to make up the story are, upon 
examination, seen to be not irrelevant but members 
of the one body, working together towards a common 
end. It is a puzzling question how this firm art 
was secured: since technique does not mean so much 
a gift from heaven as the taking of forethought, the 
self-conscious skill of a practitioner. Miss Austen, 
setting down her thoughts of an evening in a copy- 
book in her lap, interrupted by conversations and 
at the beck and call of household duties, does not 
seem as one who was acquiring the mastery of a 
difficult art-form. But the wind bloweth where it 
listeth — and the evidences of skill are there; we can 
but chronicle the fact, and welcome the result. 

She was old-fashioned in her adherence to the 
" pleasant ending " ; realist though she was, she 
could not go to the lengths either of theme or in- 
terpretation in the portrayal of life which later novel- 
ists have so sturdily ventured. It is easy to under- 
stand that with her avowed dislike of tragedy, living 
in a time when it was regarded as the business of 
fiction to be amusing — when, in short, it was not 



REALISM: JANE AUSTEN 117 

fashionable to be disagreeable, as it has since become 
— Jane Austen should have preferred to round out 
her stories with a " curtain " that sends the audience 
home content. She treats this desire in herself with 
a gentle cynicism which, read to-day, detracts some- 
what perhaps from the verity of her pictures. She 
steps out from the picture at the close of her book 
to say a word in proper person. Thus, in " Mans- 
field Park," in bringing Fanny Price into the arms 
of her early lover, Edmund, she says : " I purposely 
abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one 
may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the 
cure of unconquerable passions and the transfer of 
unchanging attachments must vary much as to time 
in different people. I only entreat everybody to 
believe that exactly at the time when it was quite 
natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, 
Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford and 
became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself 
could desire." 

But it cannot be urged against her that it was her 
habit to effect these agreeable conclusions to her 
social histories by tampering with probability or 
violently wresting events from their proper sequence. 
Life is neither comedy nor tragedy — it is tragi-com- 
edy, or, if you prefer the graver emphasis, comi- 
tragedy. Miss Austen, truth-lover, has as good a 
right to leave her lovers at the juncture when we 
see them happily mated, as at those more grievous 



118 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

junctures so much affected by later fiction. Both 
representations may be true or false in effect, accord- 
ing as the fictionist throws emphasis and manages 
light-and-shade. A final page whereon all is couleur 
de rose has, no doubt, an artificial look to us now: a 
writer of Miss Austen's school or her kind of genius 
for reporting fact, could not have finished her fictions 
in just the same way. There is no blame properly, 
since the phenomenon has to do with the growth of 
human thought, the change of ideals reflected in 
literature. 

For one more point: Miss Austen only knew, or 
anyhow, only cared to write, one sort of Novel — the 
love story. With her, a young man and woman 
(or two couples having similar relations) are inter- 
ested in each other and after various complications 
arising from their personal characteristics, from fam- 
ily interference or other criss-cross of events, mis- 
placement of affection being a trump card, are united 
in the end. The formula is of primitive simplicity. 
The wonder is that so much of involvement and 
genuine human interest can be got out of such scant 
use of the possible permutations of plot. It is all 
in the way it is done. 

Love stories are still written in profusion, and 
we imagine that so compelling a motive for fiction 
will still be vital (in some one of its innumerable 
phases) in the twenty-fifth century. Yet it is true 
that novelists now point with pride to the work of 



REALISM: JANE AUSTEN 119 

the last generation of their art, in that it has so 
often made sex love subsidiary to other appeals, or 
even eliminated it altogether from their books. Some 
even boast of the fact that not a woman is to be 
found in the pages of their latest creation. Nearly 
one hundred years ago, Defoe showed the possibility 
(if you happen to have genius) of making a power- 
ful story without the introduction of the eternal 
feminine: Crusoe could not declare with Cyrano de 
Bergerac : 

"Je vous dois d'avoir eu tout au moins, une amie; 
Grace a vous, une robe a passe dans ma vie." 

It is but natural that, immensely powerful as it 
is, such a motive should have been over-worked: the 
gamut of variations has been run from love licit 
to love illicit, and love degenerate and abnormal 
to no-love-at-all. But any publisher will assure you 
that still " love conquers all " ; and in the early 
nineteenth century any novelist who did not write 
tales of amatory interest was a fool: the time was 
not ripe to consider an extension of the theme nor 
a shifted point of view. For the earlier story-tellers, 
in the language of Browning's lyric, 

" Love is best." 

Jane Austen's diction — or better, her style, which 
is more than diction — in writing her series of social 
studies, affords a fine example of the adaptation of 
means to end. Given the work to be accomplished, 



120 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

the tools are perfect instruments for the purpose. 
The student of English style in its evolution must 
marvel at the idiom of Austen, so strangely modern 
is it, so little has time been able to make it passe. 
From her first book, her manner seems to be easy, 
adequate, unforced, with nothing about it self-con- 
scious or gauche. In the development of some great 
writers the change from unsureness and vulgarity 
to the mastery of mature years can be traced : Dick- 
ens is one such. But nothing of the sort can be 
found in Austen. She has in " Northanger Abbey " 
and " Pride and Prejudice " — early works — a power 
in idiomatic English which enables her reader to see 
her thought through its limpid medium of language, 
giving, it may be, as little attention to the form of 
expression as a man uninstructed in the niceties of 
a woman's dress gives to those details which none 
the less in their totality produce on him a most 
formidable effect. Miss Austen's is not the style of 
startling tricks: nor has she the flashing felicities of 
a Stevenson which lead one to return to a passage 
for re-gustation. Her manner rarely if ever takes 
the attention from her matter. But her words and 
their marshaling ( always bearing in her mind her un- 
ambitious purpose) make as fit a garment for her 
thought as was ever devised upon English looms. 
If this is style, then Jane Austen possesses it, as 
have very few of the race. There is just a touch 
of the archaic in it, enough to give a quaintness that 



EEALISM: JANE AUSTEN 121 

has charm without being precious in the French 
sense ; hers are breeding and dignity without distance 
or stiffness. Now and again the life-likeness is ac- 
centuated by a sort of undress which goes to the 
verge of the slip-shod — as if a gentlewoman should 
not be too particular, lest she seem professional; 
the sort of liberty with the starched proprieties of 
English which Thackeray later took with such de- 
lightful results. Of her style as a whole, then, we 
may say that it is good literature for the very reason 
that it is not literary ; neither mannered nor mincing 
nor affectedly plain. The style is the woman — and 
the woman wrote as a lady should who is portraying 
genteel society; very much as she would talk — with 
the difference the artist will always make between 
life and its expression in letters. 

Miss Austen's place was won slowly but surely, 
unlike those authors whose works spring into in- 
stantaneous popularity, to be forgotten with equal 
promptness, or others who like Mrs. Stowe write a 
book which, for historical reasons, gains immediate 
vogue and yet retains a certain reputation. The 
author of " Pride and Prejudice " gains in position 
with the passing of the years. She is one of the 
select company of English writers who after a cen- 
tury are really read, really of more than historical 
significance. New and attractive editions of her 
books are frequent : she not only holds critical regard 
(and to criticism her importance is permanent) but 



122 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

is read bj an appreciable number of the lovers of 
sound literature; read far more generally, we feel 
sure, than Disraeli or Bulwer or Charles Kingsley, 
who are so much nearer our own day and who filled so 
large a place in their respective times. Compared 
with them, Jane Austen appears a serene classic. 
When all is said, the test, the supreme test, is to 
be read: that means that an author is vitally alive, 
not dead on the shelves of a library where he has 
been placed out of deference to the literary Mrs. 
Grundy. Lessing felt this when he wrote his bril- 
liant quatrain: 

Wer wird nicht einen Klopstock loben, 
Doch wird ihn jeder lesen? Nein ! 
Wir wollen weniger erhoben 
Und fleissiger gelesen sein. 

So was the century which was to be conspicuous 
for its development of fiction that should portray 
the social relations of contemporary life with fine 
and ever-increasing tiTith, most happily inaugurated 
by a woman who founded its traditions and was a 
wonderful example of its method. She is the liter- 
ary godmother of Trollope and Howells, and of 
all other novelists since who prefer to the most spec- 
tacular uses of the imagination the unsensational 
chronicling of life. 



CHAPTER VI 

MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 

The year after the appearance of " Pride and 
Prejudice " there began to be published in England 
a series of anonymous historical stories to which the 
name of Waverley Novels came to be affixed, the title 
of the first volume. It was not until the writer had 
produced for more than a decade a splendid list of 
fictions familiar to all lovers of literature, that his 
name — by that time guessed by many and admitted 
to some — was publicly announced as that of Walter 
Scott — a man who, before he had printed a single 
romance, had won more than national importance by 
a succession of narrative poems beginning with " The 
Lay of the Last Minstrel." 

Few careers, personal and professional, in letters, 
are more stimulating and attractive than that of 
Scott. His life was winsome, his work of that large 
and noble order that implies a worthy personality 
behind it. Scott, the man, as he is portrayed in 
Lockhart's Life and the ever-delightful Letters, is 
as suitable an object of admiration as Scott the 
author of " Guy Mannering " and " Old Mortality." 
And when we reflect that by the might of his genius 

123 



124 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

he set his seal on the historical romance, that the 
modern romance derives from Scott, and that, more- 
over, in spite of the remarkable achievements in this 
order of fiction during almost a century, he remains 
not only its founder but its chief ornament, his con- 
tribution to modern fiction begins to be appreciated. 
The characteristics of the Novel proper as a spe- 
cific kind of fiction have been already indicated and 
illustrated in this study: we have seen that it is a 
picture of real life in a setting of to-day: the ro- 
mance, which is Scott's business, is distinguished 
from this in its use of past time and historic per- 
sonages, its heightening of effect by the introducing 
of the exceptional in scene and character, its general 
higher color in the conductment of the narrative : and 
above all, its emphasis upon the larger, nobler, more 
inspiring aspects of humanity. This, be it under- 
stood, is the romance of modern times, not the elder 
romance which was irresponsible in its picture of 
life, falsely idealistic. When Sir Walter began his 
fiction, the trend of the English Novel inheriting the 
method and purpose of Richardson, was away from 
the romantic in this sense. The analysis given has, 
it may be hoped, made this plain. It was by the 
sheer force of his creative gift, therefore, that Scott 
set the fashion for the romance in fiction: aided 
though he doubtless was by the general romanticism 
introduced by the greater English poets and ex- 
pressive of the movement in literature towards free- 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 125 

dom, which followed the French Revolution. That 
Scott at this time gave the fiction an impulse not 
in the central flow of development is shown in the 
fact of its rapid decadence after he passed away. 
While the romance is thus a different thing from the 
Novel, modern fiction is close woven of the two 
strands of realism and romance, and a comprehensive 
study must have both in mind. Even authors like 
Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot, who are to be re- 
garded as stalwart realists, could not avoid a single 
sally each into romance, with " A Tale of Two 
Cities," " Henry Esmond " and " Romola " ; and on 
the other hand, romanticists like Hawthorne and 
Stevenson have used the methods and manner of the 
realist, giving their loftiest flights the most solid 
groundwork of psychologic reality. It must always 
be borne in mind that there is a romantic way of 
dealing with fact: that a novel of contemporary so- 
ciety which implies its more exceptional possibilities 
and gives due regard to the symbol behind every 
so-called fact, can be, in a good sense, romantic. 
Surely, that is a more acceptable use of the realistic 
formula which, by the exercise of an imaginative 
grasp of history, makes alive and veritable for us 
some hitherto unrealized person or by-gone epoch. 
Scott is thus a romanticist because he gave the ro- 
mantic implications of reality: and is a novelist in 
that broader, better definition of the word which ad- 
mits it to be the novelist's business to portray social 



126 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

humanity, past or present, by means of a unified, 
progressive prose narrative. Scott, although he 
takes advantage of the romancer's privilege of a free 
use of the historic past, the presentation of its heroic 
episodes and spectacular events, is a novelist, after 
all, because he deals with the recognizably human, 
not with the grotesque, supernatural, impossible. He 
imparts a vivid sense of the social interrelations, for 
the most part in a medieval environment, but in 
any case in an environment wliich one recognizes 
as controlled by human laws ; not the brain-freak 
of a pseudo-idealist. Scott's Novels, judged broadly, 
make an impression of unity, movement and climax. 
To put it tersely: he painted manners, interpreted 
character in an historic setting and furnished story 
for story's sake. Nor was his genius helpless with- 
out the historic prop. Certain of his major suc- 
cesses are hardly historical narratives at all; the 
scene of " Guy Mannering," for example, and of 
*' The Antiquary," is laid in a time but little before 
that which was known personally to the romancer 
in his young manhood. 

It will be seen in this theory of realism and ro- 
mance that so far from antagonists are the story 
of truth and the story of poetry, they merely stand 
for diverging preferences in handling material. No- 
body has stated this distinction better than America's 
greatest romancer, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Having 
" The House of the Seven Gables " in mind, he says : 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 127 

" When a writer calls his work a romance, it need 
hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain 
latitude both as to its fashion and material, which 
he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, 
had he professed to be writing a novel. The latter 
form of composition is presumed to aim at a very 
minute fidelity, not only to the possible, but to the 
probable and ordinary course of man's experience. 
The former, while as a work of art it must rigidly 
subject itself to laws and while it sins unpardonably 
so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of 
the human heart, has fairly a right to present that 
truth under circumstances to a great extent of the 
author's own choosing or creation. If he think fit, 
also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as 
to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and 
enrich the shadows of the picture. He will be wise, 
no doubt, to make a very moderate use of the privi- 
leges here stated, and, especially, to mingle the mar- 
velous rather as a slight, delicate and evanescent 
flavor than as any portion of the actual substance 
of the dish offered to the public. The point of 
view in which this tale comes under the romantic 
definition lies in the attempt to connect a by-gone 
time with the very present that is flitting away from 
us. It is a legend, prolonging itself from an epoch 
now gray in the distance, down into our own broad 
daylight, and bringing along with it some of its 
legendary mist, which the reader may either dis- 



128 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

regard or allow it to float almost imperceptibly about 
the characters and events for the sake of a pictur- 
esque effect. The narrative, it may be, is woven 
of so humble a texture, as to require this advantage 
and at the same time to render it the more difficult 
of attainment." These words may be taken as the 
modem announcement of Romance, as distinguished 
from that of elder times. 

The many romantic Novels written by Scott can 
be separated into two groups, marked by a cleavage 
of time: the year being 1819, the date of the pub- 
lication of " Ivanhoe." In the earlier group, con- 
taining the fiction which appeared during the five 
years from 1814 to 1819, we find world-welcomed 
masterpieces which are an expression of the unforced 
first fruits of his genius : the three series of " Tales 
of My Landlord," " Guy Mannering," " Rob Roy," 
" The Heart of Midlothian " and " Old Mortality," 
to mention the most conspicuous. To the second 
division belong stories equally well known, many of 
them impressive : " The Monastery," " Kenilworth," 
" Quentin Durward," and " Red Gauntlet " among 
them, but as a whole marking a falling off of power 
as increasing years and killing cares made what was 
at first hardly more than a sportive effort, a burden 
under which a man, at last broken, staggered toward 
the desired goal. There is no manlier, more gallant 
spectacle offered in the annals of literature than this 
of Walter Scott, silent partner in a publishing house 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 129 

and ruined by its failure after he has set up country 
gentleman and gratified his expensive taste for ba- 
ronial life, as he buckles to, and for weary years 
strives to pay off by the product of his pen the 
obligations incurred ; his executors were able to clear 
his estate of debt. It was an immense drudgery 
(with all allowance for its moments of creative joy) 
accomplished with high spirits and a kind of French 
gayety. Nor, though the best quality of the work 
was injured towards the end of the long task, and 
Scott died too soon at sixty-one, was the born racorir 
teur in him choked by this grim necessity of grind. 
There have been in modern fiction a few masters, 
and but a few, who were natural improvisatori: con- 
spicuous among them are Dumas the elder and Wal- 
ter Scott. Such writers pour forth from a very 
spring of effortless power invention after invention, 
born of the impulse of a rich imagination, a mind 
stored with bountiful material for such shaping, and 
a nature soaked with the humanities. They are 
great lovers of life, great personalities, gifted, re- 
sourceful, unstinted in their giving, ever with some- 
thing of the boy in them, the careless prodigals of 
literature. Often it seems as if they toiled not to 
acquire the craft of the writer, nor do they lose time 
over the labor of the file. To the end, they seem in 
a way like glorious amateurs. They are at the 
antipodes of those careful craftsmen with whom all 
is forethought, plan and revision. Scott, fired by 



130 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

a period, a character or scene, commonly sat down 
without seeing his way tlirough and wrote currente 
calamo, letting creation take care of its own. The 
description of him by a contemporary is familiar 
where he was observed at a window, reeling off the 
manuscript sheets of his first romance. 

" Since we sat down I have been watching that 
confounded hand — it fascinates my eye. It never 
stops — page after page is finished and thrown on 
the heap of manuscript, and still it goes on unwearied 
— and so it will be until candles are brought in, and 
God knows how long after that. It is the same 
every night." 

The great merits of such a nature and the method 
that is its outcome should not blind us to its dangers, 
some of which Scott did not escape. Schoolboys 
to-day are able to point out defects in his style, 
glibly talking of loosely-built sentences, redundancies, 
diffuseness, or what not. He seems long-winded to 
the rising generation, and it may be said in their 
defense that there are Novels of Scott which if cut 
down one-third would be improved. Critics, too, 
speak of his anachronisms, his huddled endings, the 
stiffness of his young gentleman heroes, his apparent 
indifference to the laws of good construction ; as 
well as of his Tory limitations, the ponderosity of 
his manner and the unmodernness of his outlook on 
the world along with the simple superficiality of his 
psychology. All this may cheerfully be granted. 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 131 

and yet the Scott lover will stoutly maintain that 
the spirit and the truth are here, that the Waverley 
books possess the great elements of fiction-making: 
not without reason did they charm Europe as well 
as the English-speaking lands for twenty years. The 
Scott romances will always be mentioned, with the 
work of Burns, Carlyle and Stevenson, when Scot- 
land's contribution to English letters is under dis- 
cussion ; his position is fortified as he recedes into 
the past, which so soon engulfs lesser men. And 
it is because he was one of the world's natural story- 
tellers: his career is an impressive object-lesson for 
those who would elevate technique above all else. 

He produced romances which dealt with English 
history centuries before his own day, or with periods 
near his time: Scotch romances of like kind which 
had to do with the historic past of his native land: 
romances of humbler life and less stately entourage, 
the scenes of which were laid nearer, sometimes al- 
most within his own day. He was, in instances, 
notably successful in all these kinds, but perhaps 
most of all in the stories falling in the two categories 
last-named : which, like " Old Mortality," have the 
full flavor of Scotch soil. 

The nature of the Novels he was to produce became 
evident with the first of them all, " Waverley." Here 
is a border tale which narrates the adventures of 
a scion of that house among the loyal Highlanders 
temporarily a rebel to the reigning Engl-ish sovereign 



132 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

and a recruit in the interests of the young pretender: 
his fortunes, in love and war, and his eventual re- 
instatement in the King's service and happiness with 
the woman of his choice. While it might be too 
sweeping to say that there was in this first romance 
(which has never ranked with his best) the whole 
secret of the Scott historical story, it is true that 
the book is typical, that here as in the long line of 
brilliantly envisaged chronicle histories that followed, 
some of them far superior to this initial attempt, 
are to be found the characteristic method and charm 
of Sir Walter. Here, as elsewhere, the reader is 
offered picturesque color, ever varied scenes, striking 
situations, salient characters and a certain nobility 
both of theme and manner that comes from the 
accustomed representation of life in which large is- 
sues of family and state are involved — the whole 
merged in a mood of fealty and love. You con- 
stantly feel in Scott that life " means intensely and 
means good." A certain amount of lovable parti- 
sanship and prejudice goes with the view, not un- 
welcomely; there is also some carelessness as to the 
minute details of fact. But the effect of truth, both 
in character and setting, is overwhelming. Scott 
has vivified English and Scotch history more than 
all the history books : he saw it himself — so we see 
it. One of the reasons his work rings true — whereas 
Mrs. Radcliffe's adventure tales seem fictitious as 
well as feeble — is because it is the natural outcome 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 133 

of his life: all his interest, his liking, his belief went 
into the Novels. When he sat doAvn at the mature 
age of forty-three to make fiction, there was behind 
him the large part of a lifetime of unconscious prep- 
aration for what he had to do : for years he had 
been steeped in the folk-lore and legend of his native 
country; its local history had been his hobby; he 
had not only read its humbler literature but wan- 
dered widely among its people, absorbed its language 
and its life, felt " the very pulse of the machine." 
Hence he differed toto ccelo from an archeologist 
turned romancer like the German Ebers : being rather 
a genial traveler who, after telling tales of his ex- 
periences by word of mouth at the tavern hearth, 
sets them down upon paper for better preservation. 
He had been no less student than pedestrian in the 
field ; lame as he was, he had footed his way to many 
a tall memorial of a hoary past, and when still hardly 
more than a boy, burrowed among the manuscripts 
of the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh, making 
himself an able antiquary at a time when most youth 
are idling or philandering. Moreover, he was him- 
self the son of a border chief and knew minstrelsy 
almost at his nurse's knee: and the lilt of a ballad 
was always like wine to his heart. It makes you 
think of Sir Philip Sidney's splendid testimony to 
such an influence : " I never heard the old song of 
Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved 
more than with a trumpet." 



134 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

All this could not but tell ; the incidents in a book 
like " Waverley " are unforced : the advance of the 
story closely imitates Life in its ever-shifting suc- 
cession of events: the reader soon learns to trust 
the author's faculty of invention. Plot, story-inter- 
est, is it not the backbone of romantic fiction? And 
Scott, though perchance he may not conduct it so 
swiftly as pleases the modem taste, may be relied on 
to furnish it. 

In the earlier period up to " Ivanhoe," that fa- 
mous sortie into English history, belong such master- 
pieces as " Guy Mannering," " Old Mortality," 
"Heart of Midlothian," "The Bride of Lammer- 
moor," and " Rob Roy " ; a list which, had he pro- 
duced nothing else would have sufficed to place him 
high among the makers of romance. It is not the 
intention to analyze these great books one by one — 
a task more fit for a volume than a chapter ; but 
to bring out those qualities of his work which are 
responsible for his place in fiction and influence in 
the Novel of the nineteenth century. 

No story of this group — nor of his career as a 
writer — has won more plaudits than " The Heart of 
Midlothian." Indeed, were the reader forced to the 
unpleasant necessity of choosing out of the thirty 
stories which Scott left the world the one most de- 
serving of the prize, possibly the choice would fall 
on that superb portrayal of Scotch life — although 
other fine Novels of the quintet named would have 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 135 

their loyal friends. To study the peerlessly pathetic 
tale of Effie and Jeanie Deans is to see Scott at 
his representative best and note the headmarks of 
his genius : it is safe to say that he who finds nothing 
in it can never care for its author. 

The first thing to notice in this novel of the ancient 
Edinburgh Tolbooth, this romance of faithful sister- 
hood, is its essential Scotch fiber. The fact affects 
the whole work. It becomes thereby simpler, home- 
lier, more vernacular: it is a story that is a native 
emanation. The groundwork of plot too is simple, 
vital: and moreover, founded on a true incident. 
Effie, the younger of two sisters, is betrayed; con- 
cerning her betrayer there is mystery: she is sup- 
posed to commit child-murder to hide her shame: 
a crime then punishable by death. The story deals 
with her trial, condemnation and final pardon and 
happy marriage with her lover through the noble 
mediation of Jeanie, her elder sister. 

In the presentation of an earlier period in Scot- 
land, the opening of the eighteenth century, when 
all punitive measures were primitive and the lawless 
social elements seethed with restless discontent, Scott 
had a fine chance: and at the very opening, in de- 
scribing the violent putting to death of Captain 
Porteous, he skilfully prepares the way for the gen- 
eral picture to be given. Then, as the story progresses, 
to the supreme sacrificial effort of Jeanie in behalf 
of her erring sister's life, gradually, stroke upon 



136 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

stroke, the period with its religious schisms, its 
political passions and strong family ties, is so il- 
luminated that while the interest is centered upon 
the Deans and their homely yet tragic history, Scotch 
life in an earlier century is envisaged broadly, truth- 
fully, in a way never to grow pale in memory. Cam- 
eronian or King's man. God-fearing peasant, lawless 
ruffian or Tory gentleman, the characters are so 
marshaled that without sides being taken by the 
writer, one feels the complexity of the period: and 
its uncivil wildness is dramatically conveyed as a 
central fact in the Tolbooth with its grim concom- 
itants of gallows and gaping crowd of sightseers 
and malcontents. 

Scott's feeling for dramatic situation is illustrated 
in several scenes that stand out in high relief after 
a hundred details have been forgotten: one such is 
the trial scene in which Effie implores her sister 
to save her by a lie, and Jeanie in agony refuses; 
the whole management of it is impressively pictorial. 
Another is that where Jeanie, on the road to Lon- 
don, is detained by the little band of gypsy-thieves 
and passes the night with Madge Wildfire in the 
barn: it is a scene Scott much relishes and makes 
his reader enjoy. And yet another, and greater, 
is that meeting with Queen Caroline and Lady Suf- 
folk when the humble Scotch girl is conducted by 
the Duke of Argyll to the country house and in 
the garden beseeches pardon for her sister Effie. It 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 137 

is intensely picturesque, real with many homely 
touches which add to the truth without cheapening 
the effect of royalty. The gradual working out of 
the excellent plot of this romance to a conclusion 
pleasing to the reader is a favorable specimen of 
this romancer's method in story-telling. There is 
disproportion in the movement: it is slow in the 
first part, drawing together in texture and gaining 
in speed during its closing portion. Scott does not 
hesitate here, as so often, to interrupt the story in 
order to interpolate historical information, instead 
of interweaving it atmospherically with the tale it- 
self. When Jeanie is to have her interview with 
the Duke of Argyll, certain preliminary pages must 
be devoted to a sketch of his career. A master of 
plot and construction to-day would have made the 
same story, so telling in motive, so vibrant with 
human interest, more effective, so far as its conduct- 
ment is concerned. Scott in his fiction felt it as 
part of his duty to furnish chronicle-history, very 
much as Shakspere seems to have done in his so- 
called chronicle-history plays ; whereas at present 
the skilled artist feels no such responsibility. It 
may be questioned if the book's famous scenes — the 
attempted breaking into the Tolbooth, or the visit 
of Jeanie to the Queen — would not have gained 
greatly from a dramatic point of view had they been 
more condensed; they are badly languaged, looking 
to this result, not swift enough for the best effects 



138 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

of drama, whereas conception and framework are 
highly dramatic. In a word, if more carefully writ- 
ten, fuller justice would have been done the superb 
theme. 

The characters that crowd the novel (as, in truth, 
they teem throughout the great romances) testify to 
his range and grasp : the Dean family, naturally, in 
the center. The pious, sturdy Cameronian father 
and the two clearly contrasted sisters : Butler, the 
clergyman lover ; the saddle-maker, Saddletree, for an 
amusing, long-winded bore; the quaint Laird Dum- 
biedikes ; the soldiers of fortune, George Wilson and 
his mate ; that other soldier, Porteous ; the gang of 
evildoers with Madge in the van — a wonderful crea- 
tion, she, only surpassed by the better known Meg — 
the high personages clustered about the Queen : loqua- 
cious Mrs. Glass, the Dean's kinswoman — one has to 
go back to Chaucer or Shakspere for a companion 
picture so firmly painted in and composed on such 
a generous scale. 

Contention arises in a discussion of a mortal so 
good as Jeanie: it would hardly be in the artistic 
temper of our time to draw a peasant girl so well- 
nigh superhuman in her traits ; Balzac's " Eugenie 
Grandet " (the book appeared only fifteen years 
later), is mUch nearer our time in its conception of 
the possibilities of human nature: Eugenie does not 
strain credence, while Jeanie's pious tone at times 
seems out of character, if not out of humanity. The 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 139 

striking contrast with Effie is in a way to her ad- 
vantage: the weaker damsel appears more natural, 
more like flesh and blood. But the final scene when, 
after fleeing' with her high-born lover, she returns 
to her simple sister as a wife in a higher grade of 
society and the sister agrees that their ways hence- 
forth must be apart — that scene for truth and 
power is one of the master-strokes. The reader finds 
that Jeanie Deans somehow grows steadily in his 
belief and aff*ection: quietly but surelj^, a sense of 
her comeliness, her truthful love, her quaint touch of 
Scotch canniness, her daughterly duteousness and 
her stanch principle intensifies until it is a pang to 
bid her farewell, and the mind harks back to her 
with a fond recollection. Take her for all in all, 
Jeanie Deans ranks high in Scott's female portrait- 
ure: with Meg Merillies in her own station, and with 
Lucy Ashton and Di Vernon among those of higher 
social place. In her class she is perhaps unparal- 
leled in all his fiction. The whole treatment of Effie's 
irregular love is a fine example of Scott's kindly 
tolerance (tempered to a certain extent by the social 
convention of his time) in dealing with the sins of 
human beings. He is plainly glad to leave Effie 
an honestly married woman with the right to look 
forward to happy, useful years. The story breeds 
generous thoughts on the theme of young woman- 
hood: it handled the problem neither from the su- 
perior altitude of the conventional moralist nor the 



140 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

cold aloofness of the latter-day realist — Flaubert's 
attitude in " Madame Bovary." 

" A big, imperfect, noble Novel," the thoughtful 
reader concludes as he closes it, and thinking back 
to an earlier impression, finds that time has not 
loosened its hold. 

And to repeat the previous statement: what is 
true of this is true of all Scott's romances. The 
theme varies, the setting with its wealth of local 
color may change, the period or party differ with 
the demands of fact. Scotch and English history 
are widely invoked : now it is the time of the Georges, 
now of the Stuarts, now Elizabethan, again back 
to the Crusades. Scott, in fact, ranges from Rufus 
the Red to the year 1800, and many are the com- 
plications he considers within that ample sweep. It 
would be untrue to say that his plots imitate each 
other or lack in invention: we have seen that in- 
vention is one of his virtues. Nevertheless, the 
motives are few when disencumbered of their stately 
historical trappings : hunger, ambition, love, hate, 
patriotism, religion, the primary passions and bosom 
interests of mankind are those he depicts, because 
they are universal. It is his gift for giving them 
a particular dress in romance after romance which 
makes the result so often satisfactory, even splendid. 
Yet, despite the range of time and grasp of Life's 
essentials, there is in Scott's interpretation of hu- 
manity a certain lack which one feels in comparing 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 141 

him with the finest modern masters : with a Mere- 
dith, a Turgeneff or a Balzac. It is a difference 
not only of viewpoint but of synthetic comprehension 
and philosophic penetration. It means that he mir- 
rored a day less complex, less subtle and thoughtful. 
This may be dwelt upon and illustrated a little in 
some further considerations on his main qualities. 

Scott, like the earlier novelists in general, was con- 
tent to depict character from without rather than 
from within: to display it through act and scene 
instead of by the probing analysis so characterist- 
ically modern. This meant inevitable limitations in 
dealing with an historical character or time. A high- 
church Tory himself, a frank Jacobite in his lean- 
ings — Taine declared he had a feudal mind — he nat- 
urally so composed a picture as to reflect this pre- 
dilection, making effects of picturesqueness accord- 
ingly. The idea given of Mary Queen of Scots 
from " The Abbot " is one example of what is meant ; 
that of Prince Charley in " Waverley " is another. 
In a sense, however, the stories are all the better for 
this obvious bias. Where a masculine imagination 
moved by warm affection seizes on an historic figure 
the result is sure to be vivid, at least ; and let it be 
repeated that Scott has in this way re-created history 
for the many. He shows a sound artistic instinct in 
his handling of historic personages relative to those 
imaginary: rarely letting them occupy the center 
of interest, but giving that place to the creatures of 



142 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

his fancy, thereby avoiding the hampering restric- 
tion of a too close following of fact. The manip- 
ulation of Richard Coeur de Lion in " Ivanhoe " 
is instructive with this in mind. 

While the lights and shadows of human life are 
duly blended in his romances, Scott had a prefer- 
ence for the delineation of the gentle, the grand 
(or grandiose), the noble and the beautiful: loving 
the medieval, desiring to reproduce the age of chiv- 
alry, he was naturally aristocratic in taste, as in 
intellect, though democratic by the dictates of a 
thoroughly good heart. He liked a pleasant ending 
— or, at least, believed in mitigating tragedy by a 
checker of sunlight at the close. He had little use 
for the degenerate types of mankind: certainly none 
for degeneracy for its own sake, or because of a kind 
of scientific interest in its workings. Nor did he 
conceive of the mission of fiction as being primarily 
instructional: nor set too high a value on a novel 
as a lesson in life — although at times (read the moral 
tag to " The Heart of Midlothian ") he speaks in 
quite the preacher's tone of the improvement to be 
got from the teaching of the tale. Critics to-day 
are, I think, inclined to place undue emphasis upon 
what they regard as Scott's failure to take the moral 
obligations of fiction seriously: they confuse his 
preaching and his practice. Whatever he declared 
in his letters or Journal, the novels themselves, read 
in the light of current methods, certainly leave an 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 143 

old-fashioned taste on the palate, because of their 
moralizings and avowments of didactic purpose. 
The advantages and disadvantages of this general 
attitude can be easily understood: the loss in philo- 
sophic grasp is made up in healthiness of tone and 
pleasantness of appeal. One recognizes such an 
author as, above all, human and hearty. The re- 
serves and delicacies of Anglo-Saxon fiction are here, 
of course, in full force: and a doctored view of the 
Middle Ages is the result, as it is in Tennyson's 
" Idylls of the King." A sufficient answer is that 
it is not Scott's business to set us right as to medi- 
evalism, but rather to use it for the imaginative pur- 
poses of pleasure. The frank intrusion of the author 
himself into the body of the page or in the way of 
footnotes is also disturbing, judged by our later 
standards : but was carried on with much charm by 
Thackeray in the mid-century, to reappear at its end 
in the pages of Du Maurier. 

In the more technical qualifications of the story- 
maker's artj Scott compensated in the more mascu- 
line virtues for what he lacked in the feminine. Pos- 
sessing less of finesse, subtlety and painstaking than 
some who were to come, he excelled in sweep, move- 
ment and variety, as well as in a kind of largeness 
of effect: " the big bow-wow business," to use his own 
humorously descriptive phrase when he was compar- 
ing himself with Jane Austen, to his own disad- 
vantage. And it is these very qualities that endear 



144. MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

him to the general and keep his memories green: 
making " Ivanhoe " and " Kenilworth " still useful 
for school texts — unhappy fate! Still, this means 
that he always had a story to tell and told it with 
the flow and fervor and the instinctive coherence of 
the story-teller born, not made. 

When the fortunes of his Active folk were settled, 
this novelist, always more interested in characters 
than in the plot which must conduct them, often 
loses interest and his books end more or less lamely, 
or with obvious conventionality. Anything to close 
it up, you feel. But of action and incident, scenes 
that live and situations with stage value, one of 
Scott's typical fictions has enough to furnish the 
stock in trade for life of many later-day romanticists 
who feebly follow in his wake. He has a special 
skill in connecting the comparatively small private 
involvement, which is the kernel of a story, with im- 
portant public matters, so that they seem part of 
the larger movements or historic occurrences of the 
world. Dignity and body are gained for the tale 
thereby. 

In the all-important matter of characterization, 
Scott yields the palm to very few modern masters. 
Merely to think of the range, variety and actuality 
of his creations is to feel the blood move quicker. 
From figures of historic and regal importance — Rich- 
ard, Elizabeth, Mary — to the pure coinage of im- 
agination — Dandy Dinmont, Dugald Dalgetty, 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 145 

Dominie Sampson, Rebecca, Lucy, Di Vernon and 
Jeanie — ^how the names begin to throng and what 
a motley yet welcome company is assembled in the 
assizes where this romancer sits to mete out fate 
to those within the wide bailiwick of his imagination ! 
This central gift he possessed with the princes of 
story-making. It is also probable that of the im- 
aginative writers of English speech, nobody but 
Shakspere and Dickens — and Dickens alone among 
fellow fiction-makers — has enriched the workaday 
world with so many people, men and women, whose 
speech, doings and fates are familiar and matter for 
common reference. And this is the gift of gifts. 
It is sometimes said that Scott's heroes and heroines 
(especially, perhaps, the former) are lay figures, 
not convincing, vital creations. There is a touch 
of truth in it. His striking and successful figures 
are not walking gentlemen and leading ladies. When, 
for example, you recall " Guy Mannering," you do 
not think of the young gentleman of that name, 
but of Meg Merillies as she stands in the night in high 
relief on a bank, weather-beaten of face and wild of 
dress, hurling her anathema : " Ride your ways, 
Ellangowan ! " In characters rather of humble pathos 
like Jeanie Deans or of eccentric humor like Dominie 
Sampson, Scott is at his best. He confessed to mis- 
liking his heroes and only warming up to full creative 
activity over his more unconventional types: border 
chiefs, buccaneers, freebooters and smugglers. " My 



146 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

rogue always, in spite of me, turns out my hero," 
is his whimsical complaint. 

But this does not apply in full force to his women. 
Di Vernon — who does not recall that scene where 
from horseback in the moonlight she bends to her 
lover, parting from him with the words : " Farewell, 
Frank, forever ! There is a gulf between us — a gulf 
of absolute perdition. Where we go, you must not 
follow ; what we do, you must not share in — farewell, 
be happy ! " That is the very accent of Romance, 
in its true and proper setting: not to be staled by 
time nor custom. 

Nor will it do to claim that he succeeds with his 
Deans and fails with women of regal type : his Marys 
and Elizabeth Tudors. In such portrayals it seems 
to me he is pre-eminently fine: one cannot under- 
stand the critics who see in such creations mere stock 
figures supplied by history not breathed upon with 
the breath of life. Scott had a definite talent for 
the stage-setting of royalty: that is one of the rea- 
sons for the popularity of " Kenilworth." It is, 
however, a true discrimination which finds more of 
life and variety in Scott's principal women than in 
his men of like position. But his Rob Roys, Hat- 
teraicks and Dalgettys justify all praise and help 
to explain that title of Wizard of the North which 
he won and wore. 

In nothing is Scott stronger than in his environ- 
ments, his devices for atmosphere. This he largely 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 147 

secures by means of description and with his wealth 
of material, does not hesitate to take his time in 
building up his effects. Perhaps the most common 
criticism of him heard to-day refers to his slow move- 
ment. Superabundance of matter is accompanied 
by prolixity of style, with a result of breeding im- 
patience in the reader, particularly the young. Boys 
and girls at present do not offer Scott the unreserved 
affection once his own, because he now seems an 
author upon whom to exercise the gentle art of skip- 
ping. Enough has been said as to Scott's lack of 
modern economy of means. It is not necessary to 
declare that this juvenile reluctance to his leisurely 
manner stands for total depravity. The young 
reader of the present time (to say nothing of the 
reader more mature) is trained to swifter methods, 
and demands them. At the same time, it needs to 
be asserted that much of the impressiveness of Scott 
would be lost were his method and manner other than 
they are: nor will it do harm to remind ourselves 
that we all are in danger of losing our power of 
sustained and consecutive attention in relation to 
literature, because of the scrap-book tendency of so 
much modern reading. On the center-table, cheap 
magazines ; on the stage, vaudeville — these are habits 
that sap the ability for slow, ruminative pleasure in 
the arts. Luckily, they are not the only modern 
manifestation, else were we in a parlous state, in- 
deed! The trouble with Scott, then, may be re- 



148 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

solved in part into a trouble with the modern folk 
who read him. 

When one undertakes the thankless task of ana- 
lyzing coldly and critically the style of Scott, the 
faults are plain enough. He constantly uses two 
adjectives or three in parallel construction where 
one would do the work better. The construction 
of his sentences loses largely the pleasing variation 
of a richly articulated system by careless punctua- 
tion and a tendency to make parallel clauses where 
subordinate relations should be expressed. The un- 
necessary copula stars his pages. Although his 
manner in narration rises with his subject and he 
may be justly called a picturesque and forceful 
writer, he is seldom a distinguished one. One does 
not turn to him for the inevitable word or phrase, 
or for those that startle by reason of felicity and 
fitness. These strictures apply to his descriptive 
and narrative parts, not to the dialogue: for there, 
albeit sins of difFuseness and verbosity are to be 
noted — and these are modified by the genial human- 
ity they embody — he is one of the great masters. 
His use of the Scotch dialect adds indefinitely to 
his attraction and native smack: racy humor, sly 
wit, canny logic, heartful sympathy — all are con- 
veyed by the folk medium. All subsequent users of 
the people-speech pay toll to Walter Scott. Small 
courtesy should be extended to those who complain 
that these idioms make hard reading. Never does 



MODERN ROMANTICISM: SCOTT 149 

Scott give us dialect for its own sake, but always 
for the sake of a closer revelation of the human 
heart — dialect's one justification. 

At its worst, Scott's style may fairly be called 
ponderous, loose, monotonous : at its finest, the ade- 
quate instrument of a natural story-teller who is 
most at home when, emerging from his longueur, he 
writes of grand things in the grand manner. 

Thus, Sir Walter Scott defined the Romance for 
modem fiction, gave it the authority of his genius 
and extended the gamut of the Novel by showing that 
the method of the realist, the awakening of interest 
in the actualities of familiar character and life, 
could be more broadly applied. He opposed the 
realist in no true sense: but indicated how, without 
a lapse of art or return to outworn machinery, 
justice might yet be done to the more stirring, large, 
heroic aspects of the world of men: a world which 
exists and clamors to be expressed: a world which 
readers of healthy taste are perennially interested in, 
nay, sooner or later, demand to be shown. His 
fiction, whether we award it the somewhat grudging 
recognition of Carlyle or with Ruskin regard its 
maker as the one great novelist of English race, 
must be deemed a precious legacy, one of literature's 
most honorable ornaments — especially desirable in 
a day so apparently plain and utilitarian as our 
own, eschewing ornament and perchance for that 
reason needing it all the more. 



CHAPTER VII 
FRENCH INFLUENCE 

In the first third of the nineteentli century Eng- 
lish fiction stood at the parting of the ways. Should 
it follow Scott and the romance, or Jane Austen 
and the Novel of everyday life? Should it adopt 
that form of story-making which puts stress on 
action and plot and is objective in its method, 
roaming all lands and times for its material; or, 
dealing with the familiar average of contemporary 
society, should it emphasize character analysis and 
choose the subjective realm of psychology for its 
peculiar domain? The pen dropped from the 
stricken hand of Scott in 1832; in that year a young 
parliamentary reporter in London was already writ- 
ing certain lively, closely observed sketches of the 
town, and four years later they were to be collected 
and published under the title of " Sketches by Boz," 
while the next year that incomparable extravaganza, 
" The Pickwick Papers," was to go to an eager pub- 
lic. English fiction had decided: the Novel was 
to conquer the romance for nearly a century. It 
was a victory which to the present day has been 
a dominant influence in story-making; establishing 

150 



FRENCH INFLUENCE 151 

a tendency which, until Stevenson a few years since, 
with the gaiety of the inveterate boy, cried up 
Romance once more, bade fair to sweep all before 
it. 

Before tracing this vigorous development of the 
Novel of Reality with Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot 
(to name three great leaders), it is important to 
get an idea of the growth on French soil which was 
so deeply influential upon English as well as upon 
other modern fiction. Nothing is more certain in 
literary evolution than the fact that the French 
Novel in the nineteenth century has molded and de- 
fined modern fiction, thus repaying an earlier debt 
owed the English pioneers, Richardson and Fielding. 
English fiction of our own generation may be de- 
scribed as a native variation on a French model: 
in fact, the fictionists of Europe and the English- 
speaking lands, with whatever divergencies personal 
or national, have derived in large measure from the 
Gaul the technique, the point of view and the choice 
of theme which characterizes the French Novel 
from Stendhal to Balzac, from Zola to Guy de 
Maupassant. 



The name of Henri Beyle, known to literature 
under the sobriquet of Stendhal, has a meaning 
in the development of the modern type of fiction out 
of proportion to the intrinsic value of his stories. 



152 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

He was, of course, far surpassed by mightier fol- 
lowers like Balzac, Flaubert and Zola; yet his sig- 
nificance lies in the very fact that they were fol- 
lowers. His is all the merit pertaining to the feat 
of introducing the Novel of psychic analysis : of that 
persistent and increasingly unpleasant bearing-down 
upon the darker facts of personality. Hence his 
" Rouge et Noir," dated 1830 and typical of his 
aim and method, is in a sense an epoch-making 
book. 

Balzac was at the same time producing the earlier 
studies to culminate in that Human Comedy which 
was to stand as the chief accomplishment of his 
nation in the literature of fiction. But Stendhal, 
sixteen years older, began to print first and to him 
falls the glory of innovation. Balzac gives full 
praise to his predecessor in his essay on Beyle, and 
his letters contain frequent references to the debt 
he owed that curious bundle of fatuities, inconsist- 
encies and brilliancies, the author of " The Char- 
treuse de Parme." Later, Zola calls him " the father 
of us all," meaning of the naturalistic school of 
which Zola himself was High Priest. Beyle's busi- 
ness was the analysis of soul states : an occupation 
familiar enough in these times of Hardy, Meredith 
and Henry James. He held several posts of im- 
portance under Napoleon, worshiped that leader, 
loved Italy as his birthplace, loved England too, and 
tried io show in his novels the result of the inactive 



FRENCH INFLUENCE 153 

Restoration upon a generation trained by Napoleon 
to action, violence, ambition and passion. 

Read to-day, " Le Rouge et Noir," which it is 
sufficient to consider for our purposes, seems some- 
what slow in movement, struggling in construction, 
meticulous in manner. At times, its intermina- 
bility recalls " Clarissa Harlowe," but it possesses 
the traits which were to mark the coming school of 
novel-writing in France and hence in the modem 
world: to wit, freedom in dealing with love in its 
irregular relation, the tendency towards tragedy, 
and that subtlety of handling which makes the main 
interest to depend upon motive and thought rather 
than upon the external action itself. " Thus con- 
science doth make cowards of us all," — that might 
be the motto. The young quasi-hero is Julian, an 
ambitious worldling of no family, and his use of the 
Church as a means of promotion, his amours with 
several women and his death because of his love 
for one of them, are traced with a kind of tortuous 
revelation of the inner workings of the human heart 
which in its way declares genius in the writer: and 
which certainly makes a work disillusioning of hu- 
man nature. Its more external aspect of a study 
of the politic Church and State, of the rivalry be- 
tween the reds and the blacks of the state religion, 
is entirely secondary to this greater purpose and 
result: here, for the first time at full length, a writer 
shows the possibility of that realistic portrayal 



154 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

sternly carried through, no matter how destructive 
of romantic preconceptions of men and women. It 
is the method of Richardson flowering in a time of 
greater freedom and more cynical questioning of the 
gods. 

II 

But giving Stendhal his full mint and cummin 
of praise, he yet was but the forerunner of a mightier 
man. Undoubtedly, he prepared the soil and was 
a necessary link in the chain of development where- 
with fiction was to forge itself an unbreakable se- 
quence of strength. Balzac was to put out his lesser 
light, as indeed the refulgence of his genius was to 
overshine all French fiction, before and since. It 
would be an exaggeration to say that the major 
English novelists of the middle nineteenth century 
were consciously disciples of Balzac — for something 
greater even than he moved them ; the spirit of the 
Time. But it is quite within bounds to say that 
of all modern fiction he is the leader and shaper. 
Without him, his greatest native follower, Zola, is 
inconceivable. He gathers up into himself and ex- 
presses at its fullest all that was latent in the strik- 
ing modern growth whose banner-cry was Truth, 
and whose method was that of the social scientist. 
Here was a man who, early in his career, for the 
first time in the history of the Novel, deliberately 
planned to constitute himself the social historian of 



FRENCH INFLUENCE 155 

his epoch and race: and who, in upwards of a hun- 
dred remarkable pieces of fiction in Novel form exe- 
cuted that plan in such fulness that his completed 
work stands not only as a monument of industry, 
but as perhaps the most inspiring example of liter- 
ary synthesis in the history of letters. In bigness 
of conception and of construction — let alone the 
way in which the work was performed — the Human 
Comedy is awe-begetting; it drives one to Shakspere 
for like largeness of scale. Such a performance, 
ordered and directed to a foreseen end, is unique in 
literature. 

As Balzac thus gave birth, with a fiery fecundity 
of invention, to book after book of the long list of 
Novels that make up his story of life, there took 
shape in his mind a definite intention : to become the 
Secretary of an Age of which he declared society to 
be the historian. He wished to exhibit man in his 
species as he was to be seen in the France of the 
novelist's era, just as a naturalist aims to study 
beast-kind, segregating them into classes for zoo- 
logical investigation. Later, Balzac's great succes- 
sor (as we shall see) applied this analogy with more 
rigid insistence upon the scientific method which 
should obtain in all literary study. The survey 
proposed covered a period of about half a century 
and included the Republic, the Empire and the Re- 
storation: it ranged through all classes and con- 
ditions of men with no appearance of prejudice, 



156 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

preference or parti-pris (this is one of the marvels 
of Balzac), thus gaining the immense advantage of 
an apparently complete and catholic comprehension 
of the human show. Of all modern novelists, Balzac 
is the one whose work seems like life instead of an 
opinion of life; he has the objectivity of Shakspere. 
Even a Tolstoy set beside him seems limited. 

This idea of a plan was not crystallized into the 
famous title given to his collective works — La 
Comedie Humaine — until 1842, when but eight years 
of life remained to him. But four years earlier 
it had been mentioned in a letter, and when Balzac 
was only a little over thirty, at a time w^hen his 
better-known books were just beginning to appear, 
he had signified his sense of an inclusive scheme by 
giving such a running title to a group of his stories 
as the familiar " Scenes from Private Life " — to 
which, in due course, were added other designations 
for the various parts of the great plan. The en- 
cyclopedic survey was never fully completed, but 
enough was done to justify all the laudation that 
belongs to a Herculean task and the exploitation of 
an almost incredible amount of human data. As 
for finishing the work, the failure hardly detracts 
from its value or affects its place in literature. 
Neither Spenser's " Faery Queen " nor Wordsworth's 
" The Excursion " was completed, and, per contra, 
it were as well for Browning if " The Ring and the 
Book " had not been. In all such cases of so- 



FRENCH INFLUENCE 157 

called incompletlon, one recognizes Hercules from 
the feet Had this mighty story-teller and student 
of humanity carried out his full intention there would 
have been nearly 150 pieces of fiction; of the plan- 
on-paper he actually completed ninety-seven, two- 
thirds of the whole, and enough to illustrate the con- 
ception. And it must be remembered that Balzac 
died at fifty. One result of the incompletion, as 
Brunetiere has pointed out, is to give disproportion- 
ate treatment to certain phases of life, to the mili- 
tary, for instance, for which Balzac has twenty-four 
stories on his list, whereas only two, " The Chouans " 
and " A Passion in the Desert," were executed. But 
surely, sufficient was done, looking to the comedy 
as a whole, to force us to describe the execution as 
well as the conception as gigantic. Had the work 
been more mechanically pushed to its end for the 
exact plan's sake, the perfection of scheme might 
have been attained at the expense of vitality and 
inspiration. Ninety-seven pieces of fiction, the ma- 
jority of them elaborate novels, the whole involving 
several thousand characters, would be impressive in 
any case, but when they come from an author who 
marvelously reproduces his time and country, creat- 
ing his scenes in a way to afford us a sense of the 
complexity of life — its depth and height, its beauty, 
terror and mystery — we can but hail him as Master. 
And in spite of the range and variety in Balzac's 
unique product, it has an effect of unity based upon 



158 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

a sense of social solidarity. He conceives it his 
duty to present the unity of society in his day, what- 
ever its apparent class and other divergencies. He 
would show that men and women are members of 
the one body social, interacting upon each other in 
manifold relations and so producing the dramas of 
earth; each story plays its part in this general aim, 
illustrating the social laws and reactions, even as 
the human beings themselves play their parts in the 
world. In this way Balzac's Human Comedy is an 
organism, however much it may fall short of sym- 
metry and completion. 

In the outline of the plan we find him separating 
his studies into three groups or classes: The Studies 
of Manners, the Philosophical Studies, and the Ana- 
lytic Studies. In the first division were placed the 
related groups of scenes of Private life, Provincial 
life, Parisian life. Political life. Military life and 
Country life. It was his desire, as he says in a 
letter to Madame Hanska, to have the group of 
studies of Manners " represent all social effects " ; 
in the philosophic studies the causes of those effects: 
the one exhibits individualities typified, the other, 
types individualized: and in the Analytic Studies he 
searches for the principles. " Manners are the per- 
formance ; the causes are the wings and the machin- 
ery. The principles — they are the author. . . . 
Thus man, society and humanity will be described, 
judged, analyzed without repetition and in a work 



FRENCH INFLUENCE 159 

which will be, as it were, ' The Thousand and One 
Nights ' of the west." 

The scheme thus categorically laid down sounds 
rather dry and formal, nor is it too easy to under- 
stand. But all trouble vanishes when once the Hu- 
man Comedy itself, in any example of it, is taken 
up ; you launch upon the great swollen tide of life 
and are carried irresistibly along. 

It is plain that with an author of Balzac's pro- 
ductive powers, any attempt to convey an idea of 
his quality must perforce confine itself to a few 
representative specimens. A few of them, rightly 
chosen, give a fair notion of his general interpreta- 
tion. What then are some illustrative creations? 

In the case of most novelists, although of first 
rank, it is not as a rule difficult to define their 
class and name their tendency: their temperaments 
and beliefs are so-and-so, and they readily fall under 
the designation of realist or romanticist, pessimist, 
or optimist, student of character or maker of plots. 
This is, in a sense, impossible with Balzac. The 
more he be read, the harder to detect his bias: he 
seems, one is almost tempted to say, more like a 
natural force than a human mind. Persons read 
two or three — ^perhaps half a dozen of his books — 
and then prate glibly of his dark view, his predilec- 
tion for the base in mankind; when fifty fictions 
have been assimilated, it will be realized that but a 
phase of Balzac had been seen. 



160 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

When the passion of creation, the birth-throes of 
a novel were on him, he became so immersed in the 
aspect of life he was depicting that he saw, felt, 
knew naught else: externally this obsession was ex- 
pressed by his way of life and work while the story 
was growing under his hand: his recluse habits, his 
monkish abstention from worldly indulgences, the 
abnormal night hours of activity, the loss of flesh, 
so that the robust man who went into the guarded 
chamber came out at the end of six weeks the shadow 
of himself. 

As a consequence of the consecration to the par- 
ticular task (as if it embraced the one view of exist- 
ence), the reader perhaps experiences a shock of 
surprise in passing from " The Country Doctor " to 
"Pere Goriot." But the former is just as truly 
part of his interpretation as the latter. A dozen 
fictions can be drawn from the body of his produc- 
tion which portray humanity in its more beautiful, 
idealistic manifestations. Books like " The Country 
Doctor " and " Eugenie Grandet " are not alone in 
the list. And how beautiful both are ! " The Coun- 
try Doctor " has all the idyllic charm of setting 
which a poetic interpretation of life in a rural com- 
munity can give. Not alone Nature, but human 
nature is hymned. The kindly old physician, whose 
model is the great Physician himself, is like Chau- 
cer's good parson, an unforgettable vision of the 
higher potentialities of the race. Such a novel de- 



FRENCH INFLUENCE l6l 

serves to be called quite as truly romance and prose 
poem, save that Balzac's vraisemblance, his gift for 
photographic detail and the contemporaneousness of 
the setting, make it modern. And thus with " Eu- 
genie Grandet " the same method applied in " The 
Country Doctor" to the study of a noble profession 
in a rural atmosphere, is here used for the portrait 
of a good woman whose entourage is again that of 
simple, natural conditions. There is more of light 
and shade in the revelation of character because 
Eugenie's father, the miser — a masterly sketch — 
furnishes a dark background for her radiant per- 
sonality. But the same effect is produced, that of 
throwing into bold relief the sweet, noble, high and 
pure in our common humanity. And in this case it 
is a girl of humble station far removed from the 
shams and shameful passions of the town. The 
conventional contrast would be to present in another 
novel some woman of the city as foul as this daughter 
of Grandet is fair. Not so Balzac. He is too broad 
an observer of humanity, and as artist too much the 
master for such cheap effects of chiaroscuro. In 
" The Duchess De Langeais " he sets his central char- 
acter amidst the frivolities of fashion and behold, 
yet another beautiful type of the sex ! As Richard- 
son drew his Pamela and Clarissa, so Balzac his 
Eugenie and the Duchess: and let us not refrain 
from carrying out the comparison, and add, how 
feeble seems the Englishman in creation when 



162 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

one thinks of the half a hundred other female 
figures, good and bad, high and low, distinctly 
etched upon the memory by the mordant pen of 
the Frenchman ! 

Then if we turn to that great tragedy of family, 
" Pere Goriot," the change is complete. Now are we 
plunged into an atmosphere of greed, jealousy, un- 
cleanliness and hate, all steeped in the bourgeois street 
air of Paris. In this tale of thankless daughters 
and their piteous old father, all the hideousness pos- 
sible to the ties of kin is uncovered to our frightened 
yet fascinated eye. The plot holds us in a vise; 
to recall Madame Vautrin's boarding house is to 
shudder at the sights and smells ! Compare it with 
Dickens' Mrs. Todgers, and once and for all you 
have the difference between the Anglo-Saxon and 
Celtic genius. 

Suppose, now, the purpose be to reveal not a group 
or community, but ons human soul, a woman's this 
time : read " A Woman of Thirty " and see how 
the novelist, — for the first time — and one is in- 
clined to add, for all time, — has pierced through the 
integuments and reached the very quick of psycho- 
logic exposure. It is often said that he has created 
the type of young-old, or old-young woman: mean- 
ing that before him, novelists overlooked the fact that 
a woman of this age, maturer in experience and still 
ripe in physical charms, is really of intense social 
attraction, richly worth study. But this is because 



FRENCH INFLUENCE 163 

Balzac knows that all souls are interesting, if only 
we go beneath the surface. The only work of modern 
fiction which seems to me so nakedly to lay open the 
recesses of the human spirit as does "A Woman of 
Thirty " is Meredith's " The Egoist " ; and, of course, 
master against master, Balzac is easily the superior, 
since the English author's wonderful book is so man- 
nered and grotesque. Utter sympathy is shown in 
these studies of femininity, whether the subject 
be a harlot, a saint or a patrician of the Grande 
Monde. 

If the quest be for the handling of mankind en 
masse, with big effects of dark and light : broad brush- 
work on a canvas suited to heroical, even epic, themes, 
— a sort of fiction the later Zola was to excel in — 
Balzac will not fail us. His work here is as note- 
worthy as it is in the fine detailed manner of his most 
realistical modern studies — or in the searching analy- 
sis of the human spirit. " The Chouans " may stand 
for this class: it has all the fire, the color, the elan 
that emanate from the army and the call of country. 
We have flashed before us one of those reactionary 
movements, after the French Revolution, which take 
on a magic romanticism because they culminate 
in the name of Napoleon. While one reads, one 
thinks war, breathes war — it is the only life for 
the moment. Just ahead a step, one feels, is the 
" imminent deadly breach " ; the social or business 
or Bohemian doings of later Paris are as if they 



164 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

did not exist. And this particular novel will achieve 
such a result with the reader, even although it is not 
by any means one of Balzac's supreme achievements, 
being in truth, a little aside from his metier, since it 
is historical and suggests in spots the manner of 
Scott. But this power of envisaging war (which will 
be farther realized if such slighter works as " A Dark 
Affair " and " An Episode Under the Terror " be 
also perused), is only a single manifestation of a 
general gift. Suppose there is desired a picture very 
common in our present civilization — most common it 
may be in America, — that of the country boy going 
up to the city to become — what.^ Perhaps a captain 
of commerce, or a leader of fashion : perhaps a great 
writer or artist: or a politician who shall rule the 
capitol. It is a venture packed full of realistic 
experience but equally full of romance, drama, poetry 
— of an epic suggestiveness. In two such volumes 
as " A Great Provincial Man in Paris " and " Lost 
Illusions," all this, with its dire chances of evil as 
well as its roseate promise of success, has been won- 
derfully expressed. So cogently modern a motive 
had never been so used before. 

Sometimes in a brace of books Balzac shows us the 
front and back-side of some certain section of life: 
as in " Cousin Pons " and " Cousine Bette." — The 
corner of Paris where artists, courtesans and poor 
students most do congregate, where Art capitalized 
is a sacred word, and the odd estrays of humanity. 



FRENCH INFLUENCE 165 

picturesque, humorous, and tragic, display all the 
chances of mankind, — this he paints so that we do 
not so much look on as move amidst the throng. 
In the first-named novel, assuredly a very great book, 
the figure of the quaint old connoisseur is one of 
fiction's superlative successes: to know him is to love 
him in all his weakness. In the second book, Bette 
is a female vampire and the story around her as 
terrible as the other is heart-warming and sweet. 
And you know that both are true, true as they would 
not have been apart : " helpless each without the 
other." 

Again, how much of the gambling activities of 
modern business are emblazoned in another of the 
acknowledged masterpieces, " Caesar Birotteau." We 
can see in it the prototype of much that comes later 
in French fiction : Daudet's " Risler Aine et Froment 
Jeune " and Zola's " L'Argent," to name but two. 
Such a story sums up the practical, material side 
of a reign or an epoch. 

Nor should it be forgotten that this close student 
of human nature, whose work appears so often 
severely mundane, and most strong when its roots 
go down into the earth, sometimes seeming to prefer 
the rankness and slime of human growths, — can on 
occasion soar into the empyrean, into the mystic 
region of dreams and ideals and all manner of subtle 
imaginings. Witness such fiction as " The Magic 
Skin," " Seraphita," and " The Quest of the Abso- 



166 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

lute." It is hard to believe that the author of such 
creations is he of " Pere Goriot " or " Cousine Bette." 
But it is Balzac's wisdom to see that such pictures 
are quite as truly part of the Human Comedy: 
because they represent man giving play to his soul — 
exercising his highest faculties. Nor does the realis- 
tic novelist in such efforts have the air of one who 
has left his true business in order to disport himself 
for once in an alien element. On the contrary, he 
seems absolutely at home : for the time, this is his only 
affair, his natural interest. 

And so with illustrations practically inexhaustible, 
which the long list prodigally offers. But the scope 
and variety have been already suggested; the best 
rule with Balzac is, each one to his taste, always 
remembering that in a writer so catholic, there is a 
peculiar advantage in an extended study. Nor can 
from twenty to twenty-five of his best books be read 
without a growing conviction that here is a man of 
genius who has done a unique thing. 

It is usual to refer to Balzac as the first great 
realist of the French, indeed, of modern fiction. 
Strictly, he is not the first in France, as we have seen, 
since Beyle preceded him ; nor in modern fiction, 
for Jane Austen, so admirably an artist of verity, 
came a generation before. But, as always when a 
compelling literary force appears, Balzac without 
any question dominates in the first half of the nine- 
teenth century: more than this, he sets the mold of 



FRENCH INFLUENCE 167 

the type which marks the second half. In fact, the 
modern Novel means Balzac's recipe. English fiction, 
along with that of Europe, shares this influence. 
We shall see in dealing with Dickens how definitely 
the English writer adopted the Balzac method as 
suited to the era and sympathetic to Dickens' own 
nature. 

As to the accuracy with which he gave a repre- 
sentation of contemporary life — thus deserving the 
name realist — considerable may be said in the way of 
qualification. Much of it applies with similar force 
to Zola, later to be hailed as a king among modern 
realists in the naturalistic extreme to which he pushed 
the movement. Balzac, through his remarkable in- 
stinct for detail and particularity, did introduce into 
nineteenth century fiction an effect of greater truth 
in the depiction of life. Nobody perhaps had — no- 
body has since — presented mis-en-scene as did he. 
He builds up an impression by hundreds of strokes, 
each seemingly insignificant, but adding to a totality 
that becomes impressive. Moreover, again and again 
in his psychologic analysis there are home-thrusts 
which bring the blood to the face of any honest 
person. His detail is thus quite as much subjective 
as external. It were a great mistake to regard 
Balzac as merely a writer who photographed things 
outside in the world; he is intensely interested in the 
things within — and if objectivity meant realism ex- 
clusively, he would be no realist at all. 



168 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

But farther than this ; with all his care for minute 
touches and his broad and painstaking observation, 
it is not so much life, after all, as a vision of life 
which he gives. This contradicts what was said 
earlj in the present chapter: but the two statements 
stand for the change likely to come to any student 
of Balzac: his objective personality at last resolves 
itself into a vividly personal interpretation. His 
breadth blinds one for a while, that is all. Hence 
Balzac may be called an incurable romantic, an 
impressionist, as much as realist. Like all first-class 
art, his gives us the seeming-true for our better in- 
struction. He said in the Preface to " Pere Goriot " 
that the novelist should not only depict the world as 
it is, but " a possibly better world." He has done 
so. The most untrue thing in a novel may be the 
fact lifted over unchanged from life? Truth is not 
only stranger than fiction, but great fiction is truer 
than truth. Balzac understood this, remembered it 
in his heart. He is too big as man and artist to be 
confined within the narrow realistic formula. While, 
as we have seen, he does not take sides on moral 
issues, nor allow himself to be a special pleader for 
this or that view, his work strikes a moral balance in 
that it shows universal humanity — not humanity 
tranced in metaphysics, or pathologic in analysis, 
or enmeshed in sensualism. In this sense, Balzac is 
a great realist. There is no danger of any novelist 
— any painter of life — doing harm, if he but gives 



FRENCH INFLUENCE 169 

us the whole. It is the story-teller who rolls some 
prurient morsel under his tongue who has the taint 
in him: he who, to sell his books, panders to the 
degraded instincts of his audience. Had Balzac been 
asked point-blank Avhat he deemed the moral duty 
of the novelist, he would probably have disclaimed 
any other responsibility than that of doing good 
work, of representing things as they are. But this 
matters not, if only a writer's nature be large and 
vigorous enough to report of humanity in a trust- 
worthy way. Balzac was much too well endowed in 
mind and soul and had touched life far too widely, 
not to look forth upon it with full comprehension of 
its spiritual meaning. 

In spite, too, of his alleged realism, he believed 
that the duty of the social historian was more than 
to give a statement of present conditions — the social 
documents of the moment, — variable as they might 
be for purposes of deduction. He insisted that the 
coming, — ^perhaps seemingly impossible things, should 
be prophesied; — those future ameliorations, whether 
individual or collective, which keep hope alive in the 
human breast. Let me again quote those words, 
extraordinary as coming from the man who is called 
arch-realist of his day : " The novelist should depict 
the world not alone as it is, but a possibly better 
world." In the very novel where he said it (" Pere 
Goriot ") he may seem to have violated the principle: 
but taking his fiction in its whole extent, he has 



170 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

acted upon it, the pronunciamento exemplifies his 
practice. 

Balzac's work has a Shaksperian universality, 
because it is so distinctly French, — a familiar para- 
dox in literature. He was French in his feeling for 
the social unit, in his keen receptivity to ideas, in his 
belief in Church and State as the social organisms 
through which man could best work out his salvation. 
We find him teaching that humanity, in terms of 
Gallic temperament, and in time limits between the 
Revolution and the Second Republic, is on the whole 
best served by living under a constitutional monarchy 
and in vital touch with Mother Church, — that form 
of religion which is a racial inheritance from the 
Past. In a sense, then, he was a man with the lim- 
itations of his place and time, as, in truth, was 
Shakspere. But the study of literature instructs 
us that it is exactly those who most vitally grasp and 
voice their own land and period, who are apt to 
give a comprehensive view of humanity at large; 
to present man sub specie ceternitatis. This is so 
because, thoroughly to present any particular part 
of mankind, is to portray all mankind. It is all 
tarred by the same stick, after all. It is only in the 
superficial that unlikenesses lie. 

Balzac was intensely modern. Had he lived to- 
day, he might have been foremost in championing 
the separation of Church and State and looked on 
serenely at the sequestration of the religious houses. 



FRENCH INFLUENCE 171 

But writing his main fiction from 1830 to 1850, his 
attitude was an enlightened one, that of a thoughtful 
patriot. 

His influence upon nineteenth century English fic- 
tion was both direct and indirect. It was direct in its 
effect upon several of the major novelists, as will be 
noted in studying them; the indirect influence is per- 
haps still more important, because it was so all-per- 
vasive, like an emanation that expressed the Time. It 
became impossible, after Balzac had lived and wrought, 
for any artist who took his art seriously to write fic- 
tion as if the great Frenchman had not come first. He 
set his seal upon that form of literature, as Ibsen, a 
generation later, was to set his seal upon the drama, 
revolutionizing its technique. To the student there- 
fore he is a factor of potent power in explaining the 
modern fictional development. Nor should he be 
a negligible quantity to the cultivated reader seeking 
to come genially into acquaintance with the best that 
European letters has accomplished. While upon the 
lover of the Novel as a form of literature — which 
means the mass of all readers to-day — Balzac cannot 
fail to exercise a personal fascination. — Life widens 
before us at his touch, and that glamour which is the 
imperishable gift of great art, returns again as one 
turns the pages of the little library of yellow books 
which contain the Human Comedy. 

Balzac died in 1850, when in the prime of his 
powers. Seven years later was published the " Mad- 



172 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

ame Bovary " of Flaubert, one of the most remark- 
able novels of the nineteenth century and the most 
unrelenting depiction of the devolution of a woman's 
soul in all fiction: certainly it deserved that descrip- 
tion up to the hour of its appearance, if not now, 
when so much has been done in the realm of female 
pathology. Flaubert is the most noteworthy inter- 
mediate figure between Balzac and Zola. He seems 
personally of our own day, for, living to be an old 
man, he was friend and fellow-worker with the 
brothers Goncourt (whom we associate with Zola) 
and extended a fatherly hand to the young Maupas- 
sant at the beginning of the latter's career, — so 
brilliant, brief, tragic. The influence of this one 
novel (overlooking that of " Salambo," in its way 
also of influence in the modern growth) has been 
especially great upon a kind of fiction most char- 
acteristic of the present generation : in which, in fact, 
it has assumed a " bad preeminence." I mean the 
Novel of sexual relations in their irregular aspects. 
The stormy artist of the Goncourt dinners has much 
to answer for, if we regard him only as the creator 
of such a creature as Madame Bovary. Many later 
books were to surpass this in license, in coarseness, 
or in the effect of evoking a libidinous taste ; but none 
in its unrelenting gloom, the cold detachment of the 
artist-scientist obsessed with the idea of truthfully 
reflecting certain sinister facets of the many-faced 
gem called life! It is hardly too much to say, in 



FRENCH INFLUENCE 173 

the light of the facts, that " Madame Bovary " was 
epochal. It paved the way for Zola. It justified a 
new aim for the modern fiction of so-called unflinch- 
ing realism. The saddest thing about the book is 
its lack of pity, of love. Emma Bovary is a weak 
woman, not a bad woman ; she goes downhill through 
the force of circumstances coupled with a want of 
backbone. And she is not responsible for her flabby 
moral muscles. Behind the story is an absolutely 
fatalistic philosophy; given a certain environment, 
any woman (especially if assisted a bit by her an- 
cestors) will go to hell, — such seems the lesson. Now 
there is nothing just like this in Balzac. We hear 
in it a new note, the latter-day note of quiescence, 
and despair. And if we compare Flaubert's in- 
difference to his heroine's fate with the tenderness 
of Dumas fils, or of Daudet, or the English Reade 
and Dickens — we shall realize that we have here a 
mixture of a personal and a coming general interpre- 
tation: Flaubert having by nature a kind of aloof 
determinism, yet feeling, like the first puffs of a cold 
chilling wind, the oncoming of an age of Doubt. 

III. 

These three French writers then, Stendhal, Balzac 
and Flaubert, molded the Novel before 1860 into 
such a shape as to make it plastic to the hand of Zola 
a decade later. Zola's influence upon our present 



174 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

generation of English fiction has been great, as it 
has upon all novel-making since 1870. Before ex- 
plaining this further, it will be best to return to the 
study of the mid-century English novelists who were 
too early to be affected by him to any perceptible 
degree. 



CHAPTER VIII 

DICKENS 

By the year 1850, in England, the so-called Novel 
of realism had conquered. Scott in an earlier 
generation had by his wonderful gift made the 
romance fashionable. But, as we said, it was the 
romance with a difference: the romance with its feet 
firmly planted on mother-earth, not ballooning in 
cloudland; the romance depicting men and women 
of the past but yet men and women, not creatures 
existing only in the fancy of the romance-maker. 
In short, Scott, romancer though he was, helped 
modern realism along, because he handled his material 
more truthfully than it had been handled before. 
And his great contemporary, Jane Austen, with her 
strict adherence to the present and to her own locale, 
threw all her influence in the same direction, justify- 
ing Mr. Howell's assertion that she leads all English 
novelists in that same truthful handling. 

Moreover, that occult but imperative thing, the 
spirit of the Time, was on the side of Realism: and 
all bend to its dictation. Then, in the mid-century, 
Dickens and Thackeray, with George Eliot a little 
later on their heels, and Trollope too, came to give 

175 



176 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

a deeper set to the current which was to flow in 
similar channels for the remainder of the period. In 
brief, this is the story, whatever modifications of 
the main current are to be noted: the work of 
Bulwer and Disraeli, of Reade, Kingsley and 
Collins. 

A decade before Thackeray got a general hearing 
Dickens had fame and mighty influence. It was in 
the eighteen thirties that the self-made son of an 
impecunious navy clerk, who did not live in vain 
since he sat for a portrait of Micawber and the father 
of the Marshalsea, turned from journalism to that 
higher reporting which means the fiction of manners 
and humors. All the gods had prepared him for 
his destiny. Sympathy he had for the poor, the 
oppressed, the physically and morally unfit, for he 
had suff'ered in his own person, or in his imagination, 
for them all. His gift of observation had been sharp- 
ened in the grim school of necessity: he had learned 
to write by writing under the pressure of newspaper 
needs. And he had in his blood, while still hardly 
more than a lad, a feeling for idiomatic English 
which, so far as it was not a boon straight from 
heaven, had been fostered when the very young 
Charles had battened, as we saw, upon the eighteenth 
century worthies. 

It is now generally acknowledged that Dickens is 
not a temporary phenomenon in Victorian letters, 
but a very solid major fact in the native literature. 



DICKENS 177 

too large a creative force to be circumscribed by a 
generation. Looked back upon across the gap of 
time, he looms up all the more impressively because 
the years have removed the clutter about the base of 
the statue. The temporary loss of critical regard 
(a loss affecting his hold on the general reading 
public little, if any) has given way to an almost 
violent critical reaction in his favor. We are widen- 
ing the esthetic canvas to admit of the test of life, 
and are coming to realize that, obsessed for a time 
by the attraction of that lower truth which makes 
so much of external realities, realism lost sight of 
the larger demands of art which include selection, 
adaptation, and that enlargement of effect marking 
the distinction between art and so-called reality. No 
critic is now timid about saying a good word for 
the author of " Pickwick " and " Copperfield." A 
few years ago it was otherwise. Present-day critics 
such as Henley, Lang, and Chesterton have assured 
the luke-warm that there is room in English literature 
for both Thackeray and Dickens. 

That Dickens began to write fiction as a very 
young journalist was in some ways in his favor; in 
other ways, to the detriment of his work. It meant an 
early start on a career of over thirty years. It meant 
writing under pressure with the spontaneity and 
reality which usually result. It also meant the bold 
grappling with the technique of a great art, learning 
to make novels by making them. Again, one truly 



178 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

inspired to fiction is luckj to have a novitiate in 
youth. So far the advantages. 

On the other hand, the faults due to inexperience, 
lack of education, uncertainty of aim, haste and care- 
lessness and other foes of perfection, will probably 
be in evidence when a writer who has scarcely attained 
to man's estate essays fiction. Dickens' early work 
has thus the merits and demerits of his personal 
history. A popular and able parliamentary re- 
porter, with sympathetic knowledge of London and 
the smaller towns where his duties took him, pos- 
sessed of a marvelous memory which photographed 
for him the boyish impressions of places like Chatham 
and Rochester, he began with sketches of that life 
interspersed with more fanciful tales which drew upon 
his imagination and at times passed the melodramatic 
border-line. When these collected pieces were pub- 
lished under the familiar title " Sketches by Boz," 
it is not too much to say that the Dickens of the 
" Pickwick Papers " (which was to appear next year) 
was revealed. Certainly, the main qualities of a 
great master of the Comic were in these pages ; so, 
in truth, was the master of both tears and smiles. 
But not at full-length: the writer had not yet found 
his occasion ; — the man needs the occasion, even as 
it awaits the man. And so, hard upon the Boz book, 
followed, as it were by an accident, the world-famous 
" Adventures of Mr. Pickwick." By accident, I say, 
because the promising young author was asked to 



DICKENS 179 

furnish the letter-press for a series of comic sporting 
pictures by the noted artist, Seymour ; whereupon- 
doubtless to the astonishment of all concerned, the 
pictures became quite secondary to the reading matter 
and the Wellers soon set all England talking and 
laughing over their inimitable sayings. Here in a 
loosely connected series of sketches the main unity of 
which was the personality of Mr. Pickwick and his 
club, its method that of the episodic adventure story 
of " Gil Bias " lineage, its purpose frankly to amuse 
at all costs, a new creative power in English literature 
gave the world over three hundred characters in some 
sixty odd scenes : intensely English, intensely human, 
and still, after the lapse of three quarters of a cen- 
tury, keenly enjoyable. 

In a sense, all Dickens' qualities are to be found 
in " The Pickwick Papers," as they have come to 
be called for brevity's sake. But the assertion is 
misleading, if it be taken to mean that in the fifteen 
books of fiction which Dickens was to produce, he 
added nothing, failed to grow in his art or to widen 
and deepen in his hold upon life. So far is this 
from the truth, that one who only knows Charles 
Dickens in this first great book of fun, knows a phase 
of him, not the whole man: more, hardly knows the 
novelist at all. He was to become, and to remain, 
not only a great humorist, but a great novelist as 
well: and "Pickwick" is not, by definition, a Novel 
at all. Hence, the next book the following year, 



180 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

" Oliver Twist," was important as answering the 
question: Was the briUiant new writer to turn out 
very novelist, able to invent, handle and lead to due 
end a tangled representation of social life? 

Before replying, one rather important matter may 
be adverted to, concerning the Dickens introduced to 
the world by " Pickwick " : his astonishing power in 
the evocation of human beings, whom we affec- 
tionately remember, whose words are treasured, 
whose fates are followed with a sort of sense of 
personal responsibility. If the creation of differ- 
entiated types of humanity who persist in living in 
the imagination be the cardinal gift of the fiction 
writer, then this one is easily the leading novelist 
of the race. Putting aside for the moment the 
question of his caricaturing tendency, one fact con- 
fronts us, hardly to be explained away: we can close 
our eyes and see Micawber, Mrs. Gamp, Pegotty, 
Dick Swiveller, the Artful Dodger, Joe Gargery, 
Tootles, Captain Cutter, and a hundred more, and 
their sayings, quaint and dear, are like household 
companions. And this is true in equal measure of 
no other story-maker who has used English speech — 
it may be doubted if it is true to like degree of 
Shakspere himself. 

In the quick-following stories, " Oliver Twist " and 
" Nicholas Nickleby," the author passed from episode 
and comic characterization to what were in some sort 
Novels : the fiction of organism, growth and climax. 



DICKENS 181 

His wealth of character creation was continued and 
even broadened. But there was more here: an at- 
tempt to play the game of Novel-making. It may be 
granted that when Dickens wrote these early books 
(as a young man in the twenties), he had not yet 
mastered many of the difficulties of the art of fiction. 
There is loose construction in both: the melodrama 
of " Oliver Twist " blends but imperfectly with the 
serious and sentimental part of the narrative, which 
is less attractive. So, too, in " Nickleby," there is 
an effect at times of thin ice where the plot is sec- 
ondary to the episodic scenes and characters by the 
way. Yet in both Novels there is a story and a good 
one : we get the spectacle of genius learning its lesson, 
— experimenting in a form. And as those other 
early books, differing totally from each other too, 
" Old Curiosity Shop," and " Bamaby Rudge," were 
produced, and in turn were succeeded by a series of 
great novels representing the writer's young prime, — 
I mean " Martin Chuzzlewit," " Dombey and Son " 
and " David Copperfield," — it was plain that the 
hand of Dickens was becoming subdued to the element 
it worked in. Not only was there a good fable, as 
before, but it was managed with increasing mastery, 
while the general adumbration of life gained in solid- 
ity, truth and rich human quality. In brief, by 
the time " Copperfield," the story most often re- 
ferred to as his best work, was reached, Dickens was 
an artist. He wrought in that fiction in such a 



182 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

fashion as to make the most of the particular class 
of Novel it represented : to wit, the first-person auto- 
biographic picture of life. Given its purpose, it 
could hardly have been better done. It surely bears 
favorable comparison, for architecture, with Thack- 
eray's " Vanity Fair," a work in the same genre, 
though lacking the autobiographic method. This is 
quite aside from its remarkable range of character- 
portrayal, its humor, pathos and vraisem*blance, its 
feeling for situation, its sonorous eloquence in massed 
effects. 

By the time he had reached mid-career, then, 
Charles Dickens had made himself a skilled, resource- 
ful story-teller, while his unique qualities of visualiza- 
tion and interpretation had strengthened. This 
point is worth emphasis, since there are those who con- 
tend that " The Pickwick Papers " is his most char- 
acteristic performance. Such a judgment is absurd. 
It overlooks the grave beauty of the picture of 
Chesney W^old in Bleak House ; the splendid harmony 
of the Yarmouth storm in " Copperfield " ; the fine 
melodrama of the chapter in " Chuzzlewit " where the 
guilty Jonas takes his haggard life; the magnificent 
portraiture of the Father of the Marshalsea in 
" Little Dorrit " : the spiritual exaltation in vivid 
stage terms of Carton's death; the exquisite April- 
day blend of tenderness and fun in limning the young 
life of a Marchioness, a little Dombey and a tiny Tim. 
To call Dickens a comic writer and stop there, is 



DICKENS 18S 

to try to pour a river into a pint pot; for a sort of 
ebullient boy-like spirit of fun, the high jinks of 
literature, we go to " Pickwick " ; for the light and 
shade of life to " Copperfield " ; for the structural 
excellencies of fiction to later masterpieces like " The 
Tale of Two Cities " and " Great Expectations." 

Just here a serious objection often brought against 
Dickens may be considered: his alleged tendency 
to caricature. Does Dickens make his characters 
other than what life itself shows, and if so, is he 
wrong in so doing? 

His severest critics assume the second if the first 
be but granted. Life — meaning the exact reproduc- 
tion of reality — is their fetish. Now, it must be 
granted that Dickens does make his creatures talk 
as their prototypes do not in life. Nobody would for 
a moment assert that Mrs. Gamp, Pecksniff and 
Micawber could be literally duplicated from the 
actual world. But is not Dickens within his rights 
as artist in so changing the features of life as to 
increase our pleasure? That is the nub of the 
whole matter. The artist of fiction should not aim 
at exact photography, for it is impossible ; no fiction- 
maker since time began has placed on the printed 
pages half the irrelevance and foolishness or one-fifth 
the filth which are in life itself. Reasons of art 
and ethics forbid. The aim, therefore, should rather 
be at an effect of life through selection and re-shap- 
ing. And I believe Dickens is true to this require- 



184 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

ment. We hear less now than formerly of his crazy 
exaggerations : we are beginning to realize that per- 
haps he saw types that were there, which we would 
overlook if they were under our very eyes : we feel 
the wisdom of Chesterton's remarks that Dickens' 
characters will live forever because they never lived 
at all! We suffered from the myopia of realism, 
Zola desired above all things to tell the truth by 
representing humanity as porcine, since he saw it 
that way: he failed in his own purpose, because 
decency checked him: his art is not photographic 
(according to his proud boast) but has an almost 
Japanese convention of restraint in its suppression 
of facts. Had Sarah Gamp been allowed by Dickens 
to speak as she would speak in life, she would have 
been unspeakably repugnant, never cherished as a 
permanently laughable, even lovable figure of fiction. 
Dickens was a master of omissions as well as of those 
enlargments which made him carry over the foot- 
lights. Mrs. Gamp is a monumental study of the 
coarse woman rogue: her creator makes us hate the 
sin and tolerate the sinner. Nor is that other mas- 
terly portrait of the woman rascal — Thackeray's 
Becky Sharp — an example of strict photog- 
raphy ; she is great in seeming true, but she is not 
life. 

So much, then, for the charge of caricature: it 
is all a matter of degree. It all depends upon the 
definition of art, and upon the effect made upon the 



DICKENS 185 

world by the characters themselves. If they live in 
loving memory, they must, in the large sense, be true. 
Thus we come back to the previous statement: 
Dickens' people live — are known by their words and 
in their ways all over the civilized world. No col- 
lection of mere grotesques could ever bring this to 
pass. Prick any typical creation of Dickens and it 
riins blood, not sawdust. And just in proportion as 
we travel, observe broadly and form the habit of a 
more penetrating and sympathetic study of man- 
kind, shall we believe in these emanations of genius. 
Occasionally, under the urge and surplusage of his 
comic force, he went too far and made a Quilp: but 
the vast majority even of his drolls are as credible 
as they are dear. 

That he showed inequality as he wrought at the 
many books which filled the years between " Pick- 
wick " and the unfinished " Mystery of Edwin 
Drood," may also be granted. Also may it be con- 
fessed that within the bounds of one book there are 
the extremes of good and bad. It is peculiar to 
Dickens that often in the very novel we perchance 
feel called upon to condemn most, occurs a scene 
or character as memorably great as anything he 
left the world. Thus, we may regard " Old Curiosity 
Shop," once so beloved, as a failure when viewed 
as a whole; and yet find Dick Swiveller and the 
Marchioness at their immortal game as unforgettable 
as Mrs. Battle engaged in the same pleasant em- 



186 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

plojment. Nor because other parts of " Little 
Dorrit " seem thin and artificial, would we forego 
the description of the debtor's prison. And our 
belief that the presentation of the labor-capital prob- 
lem in " Hard Times " is hasty and shallow, does 
not prevent a recognition of the opening sketch of the 
circus troop as displaying its author at his happiest 
of humorous observation. There are thus always 
redeeming things in the stories of this most unequal 
man of genius. Seven books there are, novels in 
form, which are indubitable masterpieces : " Martin 
Chuzzlewit," " Dombey and Son," " David Copper- 
field," "Bleak House," "A Tale of Two Cities," 
" Great Expectations " and " Our Mutual Friend." 
These, were all the others withdrawn, would give 
ample evidence of creative power : they have the large- 
ness, variety and inventive verve which only are to 
be found in the major novelists. Has indeed the 
same number of equal weight and quality been given 
forth by any other English writer .^^ 

Another proof that the power of Dickens was not 
dependent exclusivelj^ upon the comic, is his produc- 
tion of " A Tale of Two Cities." It is sometimes 
referred to as uncharacteristic because it lacks almost 
entirely his usual gallery of comics: but it is tri- 
umphantly a success in a different field. The author 
says he wished for the nonce to make a straight ad- 
venture tale with characters secondary. He did it in 
a manner which has always made the romance a favor- 



DICKENS 187 

ite, and compels us to include this dramatic study 
of the French Revolution among the choicest of his 
creations. Its period and scene have never — save by 
Carlyle — been so brilliantly illuminated. Dickens 
was brooding on this story at a time when, wretchedly 
unhappy, he was approaching the crisis of a separa- 
tion from his wife: the fact may help to explain its 
failure to draw on that seemingly inexhaustible foun- 
tain of bubbling fun so familiar in his work. But 
even subtract humor and Dickens exhibits the master- 
hand in a fiction markedly of another than his wonted 
kind. This Novel — or romance, as it should properly 
be called — reminds us of a quality in Dickens which 
has been spoken of in the way of derogation: his 
theatrical tendency. When one declares an author 
to be dramatic, a compliment is intended. But when 
he is called theatric, censure is implied. Dickens, 
always possessed of a strong sense of the dramatic 
and using it to immense advantage, now and 
again goes further and becomes theatric: that is, he 
suggests the manipulating of effects with artifice and 
the intention of providing sensational and scenic re- 
sults at the expense of proportion and truth. A 
word on this is advisable. 

Those familiar with the man and his works are 
aware how close he always stood to the playhouse 
and its product. He loved it from early youth, all 
but went on the stage professionally, knew its people 
as have few of the writing craft, was a fine amateur 



188 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

actor himself, wrote for the stage, helped to dramatize 
his novels and gave delightful studies of theatrical 
life in his books. Shall we ever forget Mr. Crummies 
and his family.? He had an instinctive feeling for 
what was scenic and effective in the stage sense. 
When he appeared as a reader of his own works, he 
was an impersonator ; and noticeably careful to have 
the stage accessories exactly right. And when all 
this, natural and acquired, was applied to fiction, it 
could not but be of influence. As a result, Dickens 
sometimes forced the note, favored the lurid, exagger- 
ated his comic effects. To put it in another way, 
this theater manner of his now and then injured the 
literature he made. But that is only one side of the 
matter: it also helped him greatly and where he went 
too far, he was simply abusing a precious gift. To 
speak of Dickens' violent theatricality as if it ex- 
pressed his whole being, is like describing the wart 
on Cromwell's face as if it were his set of features. 
Remove from Dickens his dramatic power, and the 
memorable master would be no more : he would vanish 
into dim air. We may be thankful — in view of what 
it produced — that he possessed even in excess this 
sense of the scenic value of character and situation: 
it is not a disqualification but a virtue, and not 
Dickens alone but Dumas, Hugo and Scott were great 
largely because of it. 

In the praise naturally enough bestowed upon a 
great autobiographical Novel like " David Copper- 



DICKENS 189 

field," the fine art of a late work like " Great Expec- 
tations " has been overlooked or at least minimized. 
If we are to consider skilful construction along with 
the other desirable qualities of the novelist, this noble 
work has hardly had justice done it: moreover, every- 
thing considered, — story value, construction, char- 
acters, atmosphere, adequacy of style, climactic in- 
terest, and impressive lesson, I should name " Great 
Expectations," published when the author was fifty, 
as his most perfect book, if not the greatest of Charles 
Dickens' novels. The opinion is unconventional: but 
as Dickens is studied more as artist progressively 
skilful in his craft, I cannot but believe this par- 
ticular story will receive increasing recognition. In 
the matter of sheer manipulation of material, it is 
much superior to the book that followed it two years 
later, the last complete novel : " Our Mutual Friend." 
It is rather curious that this story, which was in his 
day and has steadily remained a favorite with readers, 
has with equal persistency been severely handled by 
the critics. What has insured its popularity.? 
Probably its vigor and variety of characterization, 
its melodramatic tinge, the teeming world of dramatic 
contrasts it opens, its bait to our sense of mystery. 
It has a power very typical of the author and one of 
the reasons for Dickens' hold upon his audience. It 
is a power also exhibited markedly in such other 
fictions as " Dombey and Son," " Martin Chuzzle- 
wit " and " Bleak House." I refer to the impression 



190 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

conveyed by such stories that life is a vast, tumult- 
uous, vari-colored play of counter-motives and 
counter-characters, full of chance, surprise, change 
and bitter sweet: a thing of mystery, terror, pity and 
joy. It has its masks of respectability, its frauds of 
place, its beauty blossoming in the mud, its high and 
low of luck, its infinite possibilities betwixt heaven 
and hell. The effect of this upon the sensitive reader 
is to enlarge his sympathetic feeling for humanity: 
life becomes a big, awful, dear phantasmagoria in 
such hands. It seems not like a flat surface, but a 
thing of length, breadth, height and depth, which it 
has been a privilege to enter. Dickens' fine gift — 
aside from that of character creation — is found in 
this ability to convey an impression of puissant life. 
He himself had this feeling and he got it into his 
books: he had, in a happier sense, the joy of life 
of Ibsen, the life force of Nietzsche. From only a 
few of the world's great writers does one receive this 
sense of life, the many-sided spectacle; Cervantes, 
Hugo, Tolstoy, Sienkiewicz, it is men like they that 
do this for us. 

Another side of Dickens' literary activity is shown 
in his Christmas stories, which it may be truly said 
are as well beloved as anything he gave the world 
in the Novel foiTn. This is assuredly so of the 
"Christmas Carol," "The Chimes" and "The 
Cricket on the Hearth." This last is on a par with 
the other two in view of its double life in a book 



DICKENS 191 

and on the boards of the theater. The fragrance 
of Home, of the homely kindness and tenderness of 
the human heart, is in them, especially in the Carol, 
which is the best tale of its kind in the tongue and 
likely to remain so. It permanently altered the 
feeling of the race for Christmas. Irving preceded 
him in the use of the Christmas motive, but Dickens 
made it forever his own. By a master's magic evoca- 
tion, the great festival shines brighter, beckons more 
lovingly than it did of old. Thackeray felt this 
when he declared that such a story was " a public 
benefit." Such literature lies aside from our main 
pursuit, that of the Novel, but is mentioned because 
it is the best example possible, the most direct, simple 
expression of that essential kindness, that practical 
Christianity which is at the bottom of Dickens' 
influence. It is bonhomie and something more. It 
is not Dickens the reformer, as we get him when he 
satirizes Dotheboys hall, or the Circumlocution 
Office or the Chancery Court: but Dickens as Mr. 
Greatheart, one with all that is good, tender, sweet 
and true. Tiny Tim's thousand-times quoted saying 
is the quintessence, the motto for it all and the 
writer speaks in and through the lad when he says: 
" God bless us, every one." When an author gets that 
honest unction into his work, and also has the gift of 
observation and can report what he sees, he is likely to 
contribute to the literature of his land. With a sneer 
of the cultivated intellect, we may call it elementary : 



192 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

but to the heart, such a view of life is royally right. 
This thought of Dickens' moral obligation in his 
work and his instinctive attitude towards his audi- 
ence, leads to one more point: a main reason for this 
Victorian novelist's strong hold on the affections of 
mankind is to be found in the warm personal rela- 
tion he establishes with the reader. The relationship 
implies obligation on the part of the author, a vital 
bond between the two, a recognition of a steady, 
not a chance, association. There goes with it, too, 
an assumption that the author believes in and cares 
much for his characters, and asks the reader for the 
same faith. This personal relation of author to 
reader and of both to the imagined characters, has 
gone out of fashion in fiction-making: in this respect, 
Dickens (and most of his contemporaries) seem now 
old-fashioned. The present realist creed would keep 
the novelist away and out of sight both of his Active 
creations and his audience; it being his business to 
pull the strings to make his puppets dance — up to 
heaven or down to hell, whatever does it matter to 
the scientist-novelist .f^ Tolstoy's novel "Resurrec- 
tion " is as a subject much more disagreeable than 
Flaubert's " Madame Bovary " ; but it is beautiful 
where the other is horrible, because it palpitates with 
a Christ-like sympathy for an erring woman, while 
the French author cares not a button whether his 
character is lost or not. The healthy-minded public 
(which can be trusted in heart, if not in head) will 



DICKENS 193 

instinctively choose that treatment of life in a piece 
of fiction which shows the author kindly cooperative 
with fate and brotherly in his position towards his 
host of readers. That is the reason Dickens holds 
his own and is extremely likely to gain in the future, 
while spectacular reputations based on all the virtues 
save love, continue to die the death. What M. 
Anatole France once said of Zola, applies to the 
whole school of the aloof and unloving : " There is 
in man an infinite need of loving which renders him 
divine. M. Zola does not know it. . . . The 
holiness of tears is at the bottom of all religions. 
Misfortune would suffice to render man august to 
man. M. Zola does not know it." 

Charles Dickens does know these truths and they 
get into his work and that work, therefore, gets not 
so much into the minds as into the souls of his 
fellow-man. When we recite the sayings which iden- 
tify his classic creations : when we express ourselves 
in a Pickwickian sense, wait for something to turn up 
with Mr. Micawber, drop into poetry with Silas 
Wegg, move on with little Joe, feel 'umble after the 
manner of Uriah Heap, are willin' with Barkis, make 
a note of, in company with Captain Cuttle, or con- 
clude with Mr. Weller, Senior, that it is the part of 
wisdom to beware of " widders," we may observe that 
what binds us to this motley crowd of creatures is 
not their grotesquerie but their common humanity, 
their likeness to ourselves, the mighty flood-tide of 



194 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

tolerant human sympathy on which they are floated 
into the safe haven of our hearts. With delightful 
understanding, Charles Dudley Warner writes: 
" After all, there is something about a boy I like." 
Dickens, using the phrasing for a wider application, 
might have said : " After all, there is something about 
men and women I like ! " It was thus no accident 
that he elected to write of the lower middle classes ; 
choosing to depict the misery of the poor, their un- 
fair treatment in institutions ; to depict also the un- 
ease of criminals, the crushed state of all underlings 
— whether the child, in education or that grown-up 
evil child, the malefactor in prison. He was a 
spokesman of the people, a democratic pleader for 
justice and sympathy. He drew the proletariat 
preferably, not because he was a proletariat but 
because he was a brother-man and the fact had been 
overlooked. He drew thousands of these suppressed 
humans, and they were of varied types and fortunes : 
but he loved them as though they were one, and made 
the world love them too : and love their maker. The 
deep significance of Dickens, perhaps his deepest, 
is in the social note that swells loud and insistent 
through his fiction. He was a pioneer in the demo- 
cratic sympathy which was to become so marked a 
feature in the Novel in the late nineteenth century: 
and which, as we have already seen, is from the first a 
distinctive trait of the modern fiction, one of the 
explanations of its existence. 



CHAPTER IX 

THACKERAY 

The habit of those who appraise the relative worth 
of Dickens and Thackeray to fall into hostile camps, 
swearing by one, and at the other, has its amusing 
side but is to be deprecated as irrational. Why 
should it be necessary to miss appreciation of the cre- 
ator of " Vanity Fair " because one happens to like 
" David Copperfield " ? Surely, our literary tastes 
or standards should be broad enough to admit into 
pleasurable companionship both those great early 
Victorian novelists. 

Yet, on second thought, there w^ould appear to be 
some reason for the fact that ardent lovers of 
Thackeray are rarely devotees of the mighty Charles 
— or vice versa. There is something mutually ex- 
clusive in the attitude of the two, their different in- 
terpretation of life. Unlike in birth, environment, 
education and all that is summed up in the magic 
word personality, their reaction to life, as a scientist 
would say, was so opposite that a reader naturally 
drawn to one, is quite apt to be repelled by (or at 
least, cold to) the other. If you make a wide canvass 
among booklovers, it will be found that this is just 

195 



196 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

what happens. Rarely does a stanch supporter of 
Dickens show a more than Laodicean temper towards 
Thackeray; and for rabid Thackerians, Dickens too 
often spells disgust. It is a rare and enjoyable 
experience to meet with a mind so catholic as to 
welcome both. The backbone of the trouble is per- 
sonal, in the natures of the two authors. But I think 
it is worth while to say that part of the explanation 
may be found in the fact that Thackeray began 
fiction ten years later than his rival and was in a 
deeper sense than was Dickens a voice of the later 
century. This means much, because with each decade 
between 1830 and 1860, English thought was moving 
fast toward that scientific faith, that disillusionment 
and that spirit of grim truth which culminated in 
the work of the final quarter of the century. Thack- 
eray was impelled more than was Dickens by the 
spirit of the times to speak the truth in his de- 
lineations of contemporary mankind: and this oper- 
ated to make him a satirist, at times a savage one. 
The modem thing in Dickens — and he had it — was 
the humanitarian sympathy for the submerged tenth ; 
the modern thing in Thackeray, however, was his 
fearlessness in uncovering the conventional shams of 
polite society. The idols that Dickens smashed (and 
never was a bolder iconoclast) were to be seen of all 
men : but Thackeray's were less tangible, more subtle, 
part and parcel of his own class. In this sense, and 
I believe because he began his major novel-writing 



THACKERAY 197 

about 1850, whereas the other began fifteen years 
before, Thackeray is more modern, more of our own 
time, than his great co-mate in fiction. When we 
consider the question of their respective interpreta- 
tions of Life it is but fair to bear in mind this his- 
torical consideration, although it would be an error 
to make too much of it. Of course, in judging 
Thackeray and trying to give him a place in English 
fiction, he must stand or fall, like any other writer, 
by two things : his art, and his message. Was the 
first fine, the other sane and valuable — those are the 
twin tests. 

A somewhat significant fact of their literary his- 
tory may be mentioned, before an attempt is made 
to appreciate Thackeray's novels. For some years 
after Dickens' death, which, it will be remembered, 
occurred six years after Thackeray's, the latter 
gained in critical recognition while Dickens slowly 
lost. There can be little question of this. Lionized 
and lauded as was the man of Gadshill, promptly 
admitted to Westminster Abbey, it came to pass in 
time that, in a course on modern English literature 
offered at an old and famous New England college, 
his name was not deemed worthy of even a reference. 
Some critics of repute have scarce been able to take 
Dickens seriously: for those who have steadily had 
the temerity to care for him, their patronage has 
been vocal. This marks an astonishing shift of 
opinion from that current in 1870. Thackeray, 



198 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

gaining in proportion, has been hailed as an exquisite 
artist, one of the few truly great and permanent 
English figures not only of fiction but of letters. 
But in the most recent years, again a change has 
come: the pendulum has swung back, as it always 
does when an excessive movement carries it too far 
beyond the plumb line. Dickens has found valiant, 
critical defenders ; he has risen fast in thoughtful 
so well as popular estimation (although with the 
public he has scarcely fluctuated in favor) until he 
now enjoys a sort of resurrection of popularity. 
What is the cause of this to-and-fro of judgment .^^ 
The main explanation is to be found in the changing 
literary ideals from 1850 to 1900. When Dickens 
was active, literature, broadly speaking, was esti- 
mated not exclusively as art, but as human product, 
an influence in the world. With the coming of the 
new canon, which it is convenient to dub by the catch- 
phrase, Art for Art's Sake, a man's production 
began to be tested more definitely by the technique 
he possessed, the skilled way in which he performed 
his task. Did he play the game well.-^ That was 
the first question. Often it was the first and last. 
If he did, his subject-matter, and his particular vision 
of Life, were pretty much his own affair. And this 
modem touchstone, applied to the writings of our 
two authors, favored Thackeray. Simple, old- 
fashioned readers inclined to give Dickens the prefer- 
ence over him because the former's interpretation 



THACKERAY 199 

of humanity was, they averred, kindher and more 
wholesome. Thackeray was cynical, said they; 
Dickens humanitarian ; but the later critical mood 
rebounded from Dickens, since he preached, was 
frankly didactic, insisted on his mission of doing 
good — and so failed in his art. Now, however, that 
the Vart pour art shibboleth has been sadly over- 
worked and is felt to be passing or obsolete, the world 
critical is reverting to that broader view which de- 
mands that the maker of literature shall be both 
man and artist: as a result, Dickens gains in pro- 
portion. This explanation makes it likely that, 
looking to the future, while Thackeray may not lose, 
Dickens is sure to be more and more appreciated. A 
return to a saner and truer criterion will be general 
and the confines of a too narrow estheticism be un- 
derstood: or, better yet, the esthetic will be so de- 
fined as to admit of wider application. The Gissings 
and Chestertons of the time to come will insist even 
more strenuously than those of ours that while we 
may have improved upon Dickens' technique — and 
every schoolboy can tinker his faults — we shall do 
exceedingly well if we duplicate his genius once in 
a generation. And they will add that Thackeray, 
another man of genius, had also his malaises of art, 
was likewise a man with the mortal failings implied 
in the word. For it cannot now be denied that 
just as Dickens' faults have been exaggerated, 
Thackeray's have been overlooked. 



200 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

Thackeray might lose sadly in the years to come 
could it be demonstrated that, as some would have 
it, he deserved the title of cynic. Here is the most 
mooted point in Thackeray appreciation: it inter- 
ests thousands where the nice questions concerning 
the novelist's art claim the attention of students 
alone. What can be said with regard to it.? It 
will help just here to think of the man behind the 
work. No sensible human being, it would appear, 
can become aware of the life and personality of 
Thackeray without concluding that he was an essen- 
tially kind-hearted, even soft-hearted man. He was 
keenly sensitive to praise and blame, most affection- 
ate and constant with his friends, generous and im- 
pulsive in his instincts, loving in his family, simple 
and humble in his spiritual nature, however question- 
ing in his intellect. That is a fair summary of 
Thackeray as revealed in his daily walk — in his let- 
ters, acts and thoughts. Nothing could be sweeter 
and more kindly than the mass of his writings in 
this regard, pace " The Book of Snobs " — even in 
such a mood the satire is for the most part unbitter. 
The reminiscential essays continually strike a tender 
note that vibrates with human feeling and such me- 
morials as the paper he wrote on the deaths of Irving 
and Maucaulay represent a frequent vein. Thack- 
eray's friends are almost a unit in this testimony: 
Edward Fitzgerald, indeed — '' dear old Fitz," as 
Tennyson loved to call him — declares in a letter to 



THACKERAY 201 

somebody that he hears Thackeray is spoiled: mean- 
ing that his social success was too much for him. 
It is true that after the fame of " Vanity Fair," its 
author was a habitue of the best drawing-rooms, 
much sought after, and enjoying it hugely. But 
to read his letter to Mrs. Brookfield after the return 
home from such frivolities is to feel that the real 
man is untouched. Why Thackeray, with such a 
nature, developed a satirical bent and became a critic 
of the foibles of fashion and later of the social faults 
of humanity, is not so easy perhaps to say — unless 
we beg the question by declaring it to be his nature. 
When he began his major fiction at the age of thirty- 
seven he had seen much more of the seamy side of 
existence than had Dickens when he set up for author. 
Thackeray had lost a fortune, traveled, played Bo- 
hemian, tried various employments, failed in a busi- 
ness venture — in short, was an experienced man of 
the world with eyes wide open to what is light, mean, 
shifty and vague in the sublunary show. " The 
Book of Snobs " is the typical early document ex- 
pressing the subacidulous tendency of his power: 
" Vanity Fair " is the full-length statement of it 
in maturity. Yet judging his life by and large (in 
contrast with his work) up to the day of his sudden 
death, putting in evidence all the testimony from 
many sources, it may be asserted with considerable 
confidence that William Makepeace Thackeray, what- 
ever we find him to be in his works, gave the general 



202 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

impression personally of being a genial, kind and 
thoroughly sound-hearted man. We may, there- 
fore, look at the work itself, to extract from it such 
evidence as it offers, remembering that, when all is 
said, the deepest part of a man, his true quality, 
is always to be discovered in his writings. 

First a word on the books secondary to the four 
great novels. It is necessary at the start in study- 
ing him to realize that Thackeray for years before he 
wrote novels was an essayist, who, when he came 
to make fiction introduced into it the essay touch 
and point of view. The essay manner makes his 
larger fiction delightful, is one of its chief charms 
and characteristics. And contrariwise, the looseness 
of construction, the lack of careful architecture in 
Thackeray's stories, look to the same fact. 

It can not justly be said of these earlier and minor 
writings that, taken as a whole, they reveal a cynic. 
They contain many thrusts at the foolishness and 
knavery of society, especially that genteel portion 
of it with which the writer, by birth, education and 
experience, was familiar. When Thackeray, in the 
thirties, turned to newspaper writing, he did so for 
practical reasons : he needed money, and he used such 
talents as were his as a writer, knowing that the 
chances were better than in art, which he had before 
pursued. It was natural that he should have turned 
to account his social experiences, which gave him 
a power not possessed by the run of literary hacks. 



THACKERAY 203 

and which had been to . some extent disillusioning, 
but had by no means soured him. Broadly viewed, 
the tone of these first writings was genial, the light 
and shade of human nature — in its average, as it 
is seen in the world — was properly represented. In 
fact, often, as in " The Great Hoggarty Diamond," 
the style is almost that of burlesque, at moments, of 
horse-play: and there are too touches of beautiful 
young-man pathos. Such a work is anything rather 
than tart or worldly. There are scenes in that 
enjoyable story that read more like Dickens than 
the Thackeray of " Vanity Fair." The same re- 
mark applies, though in a different way, to the " Yel- 
lowplush Papers." An early work like " Barry Lyn- 
don," unique among the productions of the young 
writer, expresses the deeper aspect of his tendency to 
depict the unpleasant with satiric force, to make 
clear-cut pictures of rascals, male and female. Yet 
in this historical study, the eighteenth century set- 
ting relieves the effect and one does not feel that 
the author is speaking with that direct earnestness 
one encounters in " Pendennis " and " The New- 
comes." The many essays, of which the " Round- 
about Papers " are a type, exhibit almost exclusively 
the sunnier and more attractive side of Thackeray's 
genius. Here and there, in the minor fiction of this 
experimental period, there are premonitions of the 
more drastic treatment of later years : but the domi- 
nant mood is quite other. One who read the essays 



204 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

alone, with no knowledge of the fiction, would be 
astonished at a charge of cynicism brought against 
the author. 

And so we come to the major fiction: "Vanity 
Fair," " Pendennis," "The Newcomes," and "Es- 
mond." Of " The Adventures of Philip " a later 
word may be said. " The Virginians " is a com- 
paratively unimportant pendant to that great his- 
torical picture, " Henry Esmond." The quartet 
practically composes the fundamental contribution 
of Thackeray to the world of fiction, containing 
as it does all his characteristic traits. Some of 
them have been pointed out, time out of mind : others, 
often claimed, are either wanting or their virtue 
has been much exaggerated. 

Of the merits incontestable, first and foremost 
may be mentioned the color and motion of Life which 
spread like an atmosphere over this fiction. By his 
inimitable idiom, his knowledge of the polite world, 
and his equal knowledge of the average human being 
irrespective of class or condition, Thackeray was 
able to make his chronicle appear the very truth. 
Moreover, for a second great merit, he was able, 
quite without meretricious appeals, to make that 
truth interesting. You follow the fortunes of the 
folk in a typical Thackeray novel as you would 
follow a similar group in actual life. They interest 
because they are real — or seem to be, which, for the 
purposes of art, is the same thing. To read is 



THACKERAY 205 

not so much to look from an outside place at a 
fictive representation of existence as to be participant 
in such a piece of life — to feel as if you were liv- 
ing the story. Only masters accomplish this, and 
it is, it may be added, the specialty of modern 
masters. 

For another shining merit: much of wisdom as- 
similated by the author in the course of his days 
is given forth with pungent power and in piquant 
garb in the pages of these books: the reader relishes 
the happy statements of an experience profounder 
than his own, yet tallying in essentials: Thackeray's 
remarks seem to gather up into final shape the scat- 
tered oracles of the years. Gratitude goes out to 
an author who can thus condense and refine one's 
own inarticulate conclusions. The mental palate 
is tickled by this, while the taste is titillated by the 
grace and fitness of the style. 

Yet in connection with this quality is a habit 
which already makes Thackeray seem of an older 
time — a trifle archaic in technique. I refer to the 
intrusion of the author into the story in first-per- 
sonal comment and criticism. This is tabooed by 
the present-day realist canons. It weakens the illu- 
sion, say the artists of our own day, this entrance 
of an actual personality upon the stage of the 
imagined scene. Thackeray is guilty of this lovable 
sin to a greater degree than is Dickens, and it may 
be added here that, while the latter has so often 



206 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

been called preacher in contrast with Thackeray 
the artist, as a matter of fact, Thackeray moralizes 
in the fashion described fully as much: the differ- 
ence being that he does it with lighter touch 
and with less strenuosity and obvious seriousness : 
is more consistently amusing in the act of in- 
struction. 

Thackeray again has less story to tell than his 
greatest contemporary and never gained a sure hand 
in construction, with the possible exception of 
his one success in plot, " Henry Esmond." Nothing 
is more apparent than the loose texture of " Vanity 
Fair," where two stories centering in the antithetic 
women, Becky and Amelia, are held together chron- 
icle fashion, not in the nexus of an organism of 
close weave. But this very looseness, where there 
is such superlative power of characterization with 
plenty of invention in incident, adds to the verisimil- 
itude and attraction of the book. The impression 
of life is all the more vivid, because of the lack of 
proportioned progress to a climax. The story con- 
ducts itself and ends much as does life: people come 
in and out and when Finis is written, we feel we 
may see them again — as indeed often happens, for 
Thackeray used the pleasant device of re-introducing 
favorite characters such as Pendennis, Warrington 
and the descendants thereof, and it adds distinctly 
to the reality of the ensemble. 

" Vanity Fair " has most often been given pre- 



THACKERAY 207 

cedence over the other novels of contemporary life: 
but for individual scenes and strength of character 
drawing both " Pendennis " and " The Newcomes " 
set up vigorous claims. If there be no single triumph 
in female portraiture like Becky Sharp, Ethel New- 
come (on the side of virtue) is a far finer woman 
than the somewhat insipid Amelia: and no personage 
in the Mayfair book is more successful and beloved 
than Major Pendennis or Colonel Newcome. Also, 
the atmosphere of these two pictures seems mellower, 
less sharp, while as organic structures they are both 
superior to " Vanity Fair." Perhaps the supremacy 
of the last-named is due most of all to the fact that 
a wonderfully drawn evil character has more fascina- 
tion than a noble one of workmanship as fine. Or 
is it that such a type calls forth the novelist's powers 
to the full.'' If so, it were, in a manner, a reproach. 
But it is more important to say that all three books 
are delightfully authentic studies of upper-class so- 
ciety in England as Thackeray knew it: the social 
range is comparatively restricted, for even the ras- 
cals are shabby-genteel. But the exposure of hu- 
man nature (which depends upon keen observation 
within a prescribed boundary) is wide and deep: 
a story-teller can penetrate just as far into the 
arcana of the human spirit if he confine himself to 
a class as if he surveyed all mankind. But mental 
limitations result: the point of view is that of the 
gentleman-class: the ideas of the personal relation 



208 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

to one's self, one's fellow men and one's Maker are 
those natural to a person of that station. The 
charming poem which the author set as Finis to " Dr. 
Birch and His Young Friends," with its concluding 
lines, is an unconscious expression of the form in 
which he conceived human duty. The " And so, 
please God, a gentleman," was the cardinal clause 
in his creed and all his work proves it. It is wiser 
to be thankful that a man of genius was at hand 
to voice the view, than to cavil at its narrow out- 
look. In literature, in-look is quite as important. 
Thackeray drew what he felt and saw, and like Jane 
Austen, is to be understood within his limitations. 
Nor did he ever forget that, because pleasure-giving 
was the object of his art, it was his duty so to present 
life as to make it somehow attractive, worth while. 
The point is worth urging, for not a little nonsense 
has been written concerning the absolute veracity of 
Thackeray's pictures : as if he sacrificed all pleasur- 
ableness to the modem Moloch, truth. Neither he 
nor any other great novelist reproduces Life ver- 
hat'vm et literatim. Trollope, in his somewhat un- 
satisfactory biography of his fellow fictionist, very 
rightly puts his finger on a certain scene in " Vanity 
Fair " in which Sir Pitt Crawley figures, which de- 
parts widely from reality. The traditional com- 
parison between the two novelists, which represents 
Dickens as ever caricaturing, Thackeray as the pho- 
tographer, is coming to be recognized as foolish. 



THACKERAY 209 

It is all merely a question of degree, as has been said. 
It being the artist's business to show a few of the 
symbols of life out of the vast amount of raw mate- 
rial offered, he differs in the main from his brother 
artist in the symbols he selects. No one of them 
presents everything — if he did, he were no artist. 
Thackeray approaches nearer than Dickens, it is 
true, to the average appearances of life; but is no 
more a literal copyist than the creator of Mrs. 
Gamp. He was rather one of art's most capable 
exemplars in the arduous employment of seeming- 
true. 

It must be added that his technique was more 
careless than an artist of anything like his caliber 
would have permitted himself to-day. The audience 
was less critical: not only has the art of fiction been 
evolved into a finer finish, but gradually the court 
of judgment made up of a select reading public, 
has come to decide with much more of profes- 
sional knowledge. Thus, technique in fiction is ex- 
pected and given. So much of gain there has been, 
in spite of all the vulgarization of taste which has 
followed in the wake of cheap magazines and news- 
papers. In " Vanity Fair," for example, there are 
blemishes which a careful revision would never have 
suffered to remain : the same is true of most of Thack- 
eray's books. Like Dickens, Thackeray was exposed 
to all the danger of the Twenty Parts method of 
publication. He began his stories without seeing 



210 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

the end; in one of them he is humorously plaintive 
over the trouble of making this manner of fiction. 
While " Vanity Fair " is, of course, written in the 
impersonal third person, at least one passage is put 
into the mouth of a character in the book: an ex- 
traordinary slip for such a novelist. 

But peccadilloes such as these, which it is well to 
realize in view of the absurd claims to artistic im- 
peccability for Thackeray made by rash admirers, 
melt away into nothing when one recalls Rawdon 
Crawley's horsewhipping of the Marquis ; George 
Osborn's departure for battle, Colonel Newcome's 
death, or the incomparable scene where Lady Castle- 
wood welcomes home the wandering Esmond; that 
" rapture of reconciliation " ! It is by such things 
that great novelists live, and it may be doubted if 
their errors are ever counted against them, if only 
they can create in this fashion. 

In speaking of Thackeray's unskilful construction 
the reference is to architectonics ; in the power of 
particular scenes it is hard to name his superior. 
He has both the pictorial and the dramatic sense. 
The care with which " Esmond " was planned and 
executed suggests too that, had he taken his art 
more seriously and given needed time to each of the 
great books, he might have become one of the masters 
in that prime excellence of the craft, the excellence 
of proportion, progress and climax. He never quite 
brought himself to adopt the regular modem method 



THACKERAY 211 

of scenario. " Philip," his last full length fiction, 
may be cited as proof. 

Yet it may be that he would have given increased 
attention to construction had he lived a long life. 
It is worth noting that when the unfinished " Denis 
Duval " dropt from a hand made inert by death, 
the general plan, wherefrom an idea of its architect- 
ure could be got, was among his effects. 

To say a word now of Thackeray's style. There 
is practical unanimity of opinion as to this. Thack- 
eray had the effect of writing like a cultivated gentle- 
man not self-consciously making literature. He was 
tolerant of colloquial concessions that never lapsed 
into vulgarity; even his slips and slovenlinesses are 
those of the well-bred. To pass from him back to 
Richardson is to realize how stiffly correct is the 
latter. Thackeray has flexibility, music, vernac- 
ular felicity and a deceptive ease. He had, too, 
the flashing strokes, the inspirational sallies which 
characterize the style of writers like Lamb, Steven- 
son and Meredith. Fitness, balance, breeding and 
harmony are his chief qualities. To say that he 
never sinned or nodded would be to deny that he 
was human. He cut his cloth to fit the desired 
garment and is a modern English master of prose 
designed to reproduce the habit and accent of the 
polite society of his age. In his hortatory asides 
and didactic moralizings with their thees and thous 
and yeas, he is still the fine essayist, like Fielding 



212 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

in his eighteenth century prefatory exordiums. And 
here is undoubtedly one of his strongest appeals 
to the world of readers, whether or no it makes him 
less perfect a fictionist. The diction of a Thack- 
eray is one of the honorable national assets of his 
race. 

Thackeray's men and women talk as they might 
be expected to talk in life; each in his own idiom, 
class and idiosyncrasy. And in the descriptions 
which furnish atmosphere, in which his creatures may 
live and breathe and have their being, the hand of 
the artist of words is equally revealed. Both for 
dialogue and narration the gift is valid, at times 
superb. It would be going too far to say that if 
Thackeray had exercised the care in revision be- 
stowed by later reputable authors, his style might not 
have been improved: beyond question it would have 
been, in the narrow sense. But the correction of 
trifling mistakes is one thing, a change in pattern 
another. The retouching, although satisfying gram- 
mar here and there, might have dimmed the vernac- 
ular value of his speech. 

But what of Thackeray's view, his vision of things.? 
Does he bear down unduly upon poor imperfect hu- 
manity.? and what was his purpose in satire.? If 
he is unfair in the representation his place .among 
the great should suff*er; since the truly great ob- 
server of life does general justice to humankind in 
his harmonious portrayal. 



THACKERAY 213 

We have already spoken of Thackeray's sensitive 
nature as revealed through all available means : he 
conveys the impression of a suppressed sentimental- 
ist, even in his satire. And this establishes a pre- 
sumption that the same man is to be discovered in 
the novels, the work being an unconscious revelation 
of the worker. The characteristic books are of 
satirical bent, that must be granted: Thackeray's 
purpose, avowed and implicit in the stories, is that of 
a Juvenal castigating with a smiling mouth the evils 
of society. With keen eye he sees the weaknesses 
incident to place and power, to the affectations of 
fashion or the corruptions of the world, the flesh 
and the devil. Nobody of commonsense will deny 
that here is a welcome service if performed with skill 
and fair-mindedness in the interests of truth. The 
only query would be: Is the picture undistorted.^ 
If Thackeray's studies leave a bad taste in the mouth, 
if their effect is depressing, if one feels as a result 
that there is neither virtue nor magnanimity in woman, 
and that man is incapable of honor, bravery, justice 
and tenderness — then the novelist may be called cynic. 
He is not a wholesome writer, however acceptable 
for art or admirable for genius. Nor will the mass 
of mankind believe in and love him. 

Naturally we are here on ground where the per- 
sonal equation influences judgment. There can 
never be complete agreement. Some readers, and 
excellent people they are, will always be offended 



214 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

by what they never tire of calling the worldly tone 
of Thackeray; to others, he will be as lovable in 
his view of life as he is amusing. Speaking, then, 
merely for myself, it seems to me that for mature 
folk who have had some experience with humanity, 
Thackeray is a charming companion whose heart is 
as sound as his pen is incisive. The very young 
as a rule are not ready for him and (so far as my 
observation goes) do not much care for him. That 
his intention was to help the cause of kindness, truth 
and justice in the world is apparent. It is late in 
the day to defend his way of crying up the good 
by a frank exhibition of the evil. Good and bad 
are never confused by him, and Taine was right 
in calling him above all a moralist. But being by 
instinct a realist too, he gave vent to his passion 
for truth-telling so far as he dared, in a day when 
it was far less fashionable to do this than it now 
is. A remark in the preface to " Pendennis " is 
full of suggestion : " Since the author of ' Tom 
Jones ' was buried, no writer of fiction among us 
has been permitted to depict to his utmost power 
a Man. We must drape him and give him a certain 
conventional simper. Society will not tolerate the 
Natural in our Art." 

It will not do to say (as is often said) that 
Thackeray could not draw an admirable or perfect 
woman. If he did not leave us a perfect one, it 
was perhaps for the reason alleged to have been 



THACKERAY 215 

given by Mr. Howells when he was charged with 
the same misdemeanor: he was waiting for the Lord 
to do it first ! But Thackeray does no injustice to 
the sex: if Amelia be stupid (which is matter of 
debate), Helen Warrington is not, but rather a 
very noble creature built on a large plan: whatever 
the small blemishes of Lady Castlewood she is in- 
delible in memory for character and charm. And 
so with others not a few. Becky and Beatrix are 
merely the reverse of the picture. And there is a 
similar balance in the delineation of men: Colonel 
Newcome over against Captain Costigan, and many 
a couple more. Thackeray does not fall into the 
mistake of making his spotted characters all-black. 
Who does not find something likable in the Fotherin- 
gay and in the Campaigner.? Even a Barry Lyn- 
don has the redeeming quality of courage. And 
surely we adore Beatrix, with all her faults. Major 
Pendennis is a thoroughgoing old worldling, but it 
is impossible not to feel a species of fondness for 
him. Jos. Sedley is very much an ass, but one's smile 
at him is full of tolerance. Yes, the worst of them 
all, the immortal Becky (who was so plainly liked 
by her maker) awakens sympathy in the reader when 
routed in her fortunes, black-leg though she be. She 
cared for her husband, after her fashion, and she 
plays the game of Bad Luck in a way far from despic- 
able. Nor is that easy-going, commonplace scoun- 
drel, Rawdon, with his dog-like devotion to the same 



216 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

Becky, denied his touch of higher humanity. Be- 
hind all these is a large tolerance, an intellectual 
breadth, a spiritual comprehension that is merciful 
to the sinner, while never condoning the sin. Thack- 
eray is therefore more than story-teller or fine writer : 
a sane observer of the Human Comedy; a satirist 
in the broad sense, devoting himself to revealing so- 
ciety to itself and for its instruction. It is easy 
to use negations : to say he did not know nor sympa- 
thize with the middle class nor the lower and out- 
cast classes as did Dickens; that his interest was 
in peccadilloes and sins, not in courageous virtues: 
and that he judged the world from a club window. 
But this gets us nowhere and is aside from the critic's 
chief business : which is that of an appreciative ex- 
planation of his abiding power and charm. This 
has now been essayed. Thackeray was too great 
as man and artist not to know that it was his func- 
tion to present life in such wise that while a pleasure 
of recognition should follow the delineation, another 
and higher pleasure should also result: the surpris- 
ing pleasure of beauty. " Fiction," he declared, 
" has no business to exist, unless it be more beautiful 
than reality." And again : " The first quality of 
an artist is to have a large heart." With which 
revelatory utterances may be placed part of the noble 
sentence closing " The Book of Snobs " : " If fun 
is good, truth is better still, and love best of all." 
To read him with open mind is to feel assured that 



THACKERAY 217 

his works, taken in their entirety, reflect these hu- 
mane sentiments. It is a pity, therefore, for any 
reader of the best fiction, through intense apprecia- 
tion of Dickens or for any other reason, to cut 
himself off from such an enlightening student of 
humanity and master of imaginative literature. 



CHAPTER X 

GEORGE ELIOT 

George Eliot began fiction a decade later than 
Thackeray, but seems more than a decade nearer to 
us. With her the full pulse of modern realism is 
felt a-throbbing. There is no more of the ye^s and 
thous with which, when he would make an exordium, 
Thackeray addressed the world — a fashion long since 
laid aside. Eliot drew much nearer to the truth, 
the quiet, homely verity of her scenes is a closer ap- 
proximation to life, realizes life more vitally than 
the most veracious page of "Vanity Fair." Not 
that the great woman novelist made the mistake of 
a slavish imitation of the actual: that capital, lively 
scene in the early part of " The Mill on the Floss," 
where Mrs. Tulliver's connections make known to us 
their delightsome personalities, is not a mere tran- 
script from life ; and all the better for that. Never- 
theless, the critic can easily discover a difference be- 
tween Thackeray and Eliot in this regard, and the 
ten years between them (as we saw in the case of 
Dickens and Thackeray) are partly responsible: 
technique and ideal in literary art were changing 
fast. George Eliot was a truer realist. She took 

218 



GEORGE ELIOT 219 

more seriously her aim of interpreting life, and had 
a higher conception of her artistic mission. Dickens 
in his beautiful tribute to Thackeray on the latter's 
death, speaks of the failure of the author of " Pen- 
dennis " to take his mission, his genius, seriously : 
there was justice in the remark. Yet we heard from 
the preface to " Pendennis " that Thackeray had 
the desire to depict a typical man of society with the 
faithful frankness of a Fielding, and since him, 
Thackeray states, never again used. But the novel- 
ist's hearers were not prepared, the time was not 
yet ripe, and the novelist himself lacked the courage, 
though he had the clear vision. With Eliot, we 
reach the psychologic moment: that deepest truth, 
the truth of character, exhibited in its mainsprings 
of impulse and thought, came with her into English 
fiction as it had never before appeared. It would 
hardly be overstatement to say that modern psy- 
chology in the complete sense as method and interest 
begins in the Novel with Eliot. For there is a radical 
difference, not only between the Novel which exploits 
plot and that which exploits character: but also 
between that which sees character in terms of life 
and that which sees it in terms of soul. Eliot's 
fiction does the latter: life to her means character 
building, and has its meaning only as an arena for 
spiritual struggle. Success or failure means but 
this: have I grown in my higher nature, has my 
existence shown on the whole an upward tendency.? 



220 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

If so, well and good. If not, whatever of place or 
power may be mine, I am among the world's failures, 
having missed the goal. This view, steadily to be 
encountered in all her fiction, gives it the grave qual- 
ity, the deep undertone and, be it confessed, at times 
the almost Methodistic manner, which mark this 
woman's worth in its weakness and its notable 
strength. In her early days, long before she made 
fiction, she was morbidly religious ; she became in the 
fulness of time one of the intellectually emancipated. 
Yet, emotionally, spiritually, she remained to the 
end an intensely religious person. Conduct, aspira- 
tion, communion of souls, these were to her always 
the realities. If Thackeray's motto was Be good, 
and Dickens', Do good, Eliot's might be expressed 
as : Make me good! Consider for a moment and 
you will see that these phrases stand successively 
for a convention, an action and an aspiration. 

The life of Mary Ann Evans falls for critical 
purposes into three well-defined divisions: the early 
days of country life with home and family and 
school ; her career as a savant ; and the later years, 
when she performed her service as story-teller. Un- 
questionably, the first period was most important 
in influencing her genius. It was in the home days 
at Griff, the school days at Nuneaton nearby, that 
those deepest, most permanent impressions were ab- 
sorbed which are given out in the finest of her fictions. 
Hence came the primal inspiration which produced 



GEORGE ELIOT 221 

her best. And it is because she drew most generously 
upon her younger life in her earlier works that it 
is they which are most likely to survive the shocks 
of Time. 

The experiences of Eliot's childhood, youth and 
young womanhood were those which taught her the 
bottom facts about middle-class country life in the 
mid-century, and in a mid-county of England; 
Shakspere's county of Warwick. Those ex- 
periences gave her such sympathetic comprehension 
of the human case in that environment that she be- 
came its chronicler, as Dickens had become the chron- 
icler of the lower middle-class of the cities. Un- 
erringly, she generalized from the microcosm of War- 
wickshire to the life of the world and guessed the 
universal human heart. With utmost sympathy, 
joined with a nice power of scrutiny, she saw and 
understood the character-types of the village, when 
there was a village life which has since passed away: 
the yeoman, the small farmer, the operative in the 
mill, the peasant, the squire and the parson, the petty 
tradesman, the man of the professions: the worker 
with his hands at many crafts. 

She matured through travel, books and social con- 
tact, her knowledge was greatly extended: she came 
to be, in a sense, a cultured woman of the world, 
a learned person. Her later books reflected this ; 
they depict the so-called higher strata of English 
society as in " Middlemarch," or, as in " Romola," 



222 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

give an historical picture of another time in a for- 
eign land. The woman who was gracious hostess 
at those famous Sunday afternoons at the Priory 
seems to have little likeness to the frail, shy, country 
girl in Griff — seems, too, far more important; yet 
it may be doubted whether all this later work re- 
veals sueh mastery of the human heart or comes 
from such an imperative source of expression as do 
the earlier novels, " Adam Bede " and " The Mill on 
the Floss." For human nature is one and the same 
in Griff or London or Florence, as all the ampli- 
tude of the sky is mirrored in the dewdrop. And 
although Eliot became in later life a more accurate 
reporter of the intellectual unrest of her day, and 
had probed deeper into the mystery and the burden 
of this unintelligible world, great novels are not 
necessarily made in that way and the majority of 
those who love her cleave to the less burdened, more 
unforced expression of her power. 

In those early days, moreover, her attitude towards 
life was established: it meant a wish to improve the 
" complaining millions of men." Love went hand 
in hand with understanding. It may well be that 
the somberly grave view of humanity and of the 
universe at large which came to be hers, although 
strengthened by the posltivistic trend of her mature 
studies, was generated in her sickly youth and a re- 
action from the narrow theologic thought with which 
she was then surrounded. Always frail — subject 



GEORGE ELIOT 223 

through life to distressing illness — it would not be 
fair to ask of this woman an optimism of the Mark 
Tapley stripe. In part, the grave outlook was 
physical, temperamental: but also it was an ex- 
pression of a swiftly approaching mood of the late 
nineteenth century. And the beginning can be traced 
back to the autumn evenings in the big farmhouse 
at Griff when, as a mere child, she wrestled or prayed 
with what she called her sick soul. That stern, 
upright farmer father of hers seems the dominant 
factor in her make-up, although the iron of her blood 
was tempered by the livelier, more mundane qualities 
of her sprightly mother, towards whom we look for 
the source of the daughter's superb gift of humor. 
Whatever the component parts of father and mother 
in her, and however large that personal variation 
which is genius, of this we may be comfortably sure : 
the deepest in the books, whether regarded as pres- 
entation of life or as interpretation, came from the 
early Warwickshire years. 

Gradually came that mental eclair cissement which 
produced the editor, the magazinist, the translator 
of Strauss. The friendship with the Brays more than 
any one thing marks the external cause of this awak- 
ening: but it was latent, this response to the world 
of thought and of scholarship, and certain to be 
called out sooner or later. Our chief interest in 
it is due to the query how much it ministered to 
her coming career as creative author of fiction. 



224 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

George Eliot at this period looked perilously like 
a Blue Stocking. The range and variety of her 
reading and the severely intellectual nature of her 
pursuits justify the assertion. Was this well for 
the novelist? 

The reply might be a paradox : yes and no. This 
learning imparted to Eliot's works a breadth of 
vision that is tonic and wins the respect of the 
judicious. It helps her to escape from that bane 
of the woman novelist — excessive sentiment without 
intellectual orientation. But, on the other hand, 
there are times when she appears to be writing a 
polemic, not a novel : when the tone becomes didactic, 
the movement heavy — when the work seems self-con- 
scious and over-intellectualized. Nor can it be de- 
nied that this tendency grew on Eliot, to the injury 
of her latest work. There is a simple kind of ex- 
hortation in the " Clerical Scenes," but it disappears 
in the earliest novels, only to reappear in stories like 
" Daniel Deronda." Any and all culture that comes 
to a large, original nature (and such was Eliot's) 
should be for the good of the literary product: 
learning in the narrower, more technical sense, 
is perhaps likely to do harm. Here and there 
there is a reminder of the critic-reviewer in her 
fiction. 

George Eliot's intellectual development during her 
last years widened her work and strengthened her 
comprehensive grasp of life. She gained in inter- 



GEORGE ELIOT 225 

pretatlon thereby. There will, however, always be 
those who hold that it would have been better for 
her reputation had she written nothing after " Mid- 
dlemarch," or even after " Felix Holt." Those who 
object on principle to her agnosticism, would also 
add that the negative nature of her philosophy, her 
lack of what is called definite religious convictions, 
had its share in injuring materially her maturest 
fiction. The vitality or charm of a novel, however, 
is not necessarily impaired because the author holds 
such views. It is more pertinent to take the books 
as they are, in chronologic order, to point out so far 
as possible their particular merits. 

And first, the " Scenes from Clerical Life." It is 
interesting to the student of this novelist that her 
writing of fiction was suggested to her by Lewes, 
and that she tried her hand at a tale when she was 
not far from forty years old. The question will 
intrude: would a genuine fiction-maker need to be 
thus prodded by a friend, and refrain from any in- 
dependent attempt up to a period so late? Yet it 
will not do to answer glibly in the negative. Too 
many examples of late beginning and fine fiction as 
a consequence are furnished by English literature to 
make denial safe. We have seen Defoe and Rich- 
ardson and a number of later novelists breaking the 
rules — if any such exist. No one can now read the 
" Clerical Scenes " without discovering in them quali- 
ties of head and heart which, when allowed an en- 



226 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

larged canvas and backed by a sure technique, could 
be counted on to make worthy fiction. The quiet 
village life glows softly under the sympathetic touch 
of a true painter. 

A recent reading of this first book showed more 
clearly than ever the unequalness of merit in the 
three stories, their strong didactic bent, and the 
charmingly faithful observation which for the pres- 
ent-day reader is their greatest attraction. The first 
and simplest, " The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos 
Barton," is by far the best. The poorest is the 
second, " Mr. Gilfil's Love Story," which has touches 
of conventional melodrama in a framework reminis- 
cent of earlier fictionists like Disraeli. " Janet's 
Repentance," with its fine central character of the 
unhappy wedded wife, is strong, sincere, appealing; 
and much of the local color admirable. But — per- 
haps because there is more attempt at story-telling, 
more plot — the narrative falls below the beautiful, 
quiet chronicle of the days of Amos: an exquisite 
portrayal of an average man who yet stands for 
humanity's best. The tale is significant as a pre- 
lude to Eliot's coming work, containing, in the seed, 
those qualities which were to make her noteworthy. 
Perusing the volume to-day, we can hardly say that 
it appears an epoch-making production in fiction, 
the declaration of a new talent in modern literature. 
But much has happened in fiction during the half 
century since 1857> and we are not in a position to 



GEORGE ELIOT 227 

judge the feeling of those who then began to follow 
the fortunes of the Reverend Amos. 

But it is not difficult for the twentieth centur}?- 
reader, even if blase, to understand that " Adam 
Bede," published when its author was forty, aroused 
a furore of admiration: it still holds general atten- 
tion, and many whose opinion is worth having, re- 
gard it with respect, affection, even enthusiasm. 

The broader canvas was exactly what the novelist 
needed to show her power of characterization, her 
ability to build up her picture by countless little 
touches guided by the most unflinching faith in de- 
tail and given vibrancy by the sympathy which in 
all George Eliot's fiction is like the air you breathe. 
Then, too, as an appeal to the general, there is 
more of story interest, although neither here nor 
in any story to follow, does plot come first with a 
writer whose chief interest is always character, and 
its development. The autobiographic note deepens 
and gives at once verity and intensity to the novel; 
here, as in " The Mill on the Floss " which was 
to follow the next year, Eliot first gave free play 
to that emotional seizure of her own past to which 
reference has been made. The homely material of 
the first novel was but part of its strength. Readers 
who had been offered the flash-romantic fiction of 
Disraeli and Bulwer, turned with refreshment to 
the placid annals of a village where, none the less, 
the human heart in its follies and frailties and no- 



228 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

bilitles, is laid bare. The skill with which the lei- 
surely moving story rises to its vivid moments of 
climactic interest — the duel in the wood, Hetty's 
flight, the death of Adam's father — is marked and 
points plainly to the advance, through study and 
practice, of the novelist since the " Clerical Scenes " ; 
constructive excellencies do not come by instinct. 
" Adam Bede " is preeminently a book of belief, 
written not so much in ink as in red blood, and in 
that psychic fluid that means the author's spiritual 
nature. She herself declared, " I love it very much," 
and it reveals the fact on every page. Aside from 
its indubitable worth as a picture of English middle- 
class country life in an earlier nineteenth century 
than we know — the easy-going days before electricity 
— it has its highest claim to our regard as a reading 
in life, not conveyed by word of mouth didactically, 
but carried in scene and character. The author's 
tenderness over Hetty, without even sentimentalizing 
her as, for example, Dumas sentimentalizes his Ca- 
mille, suggests the mood of the whole narrative: a 
large-minded, large-hearted comprehension of hu- 
mankind, an insistence on spiritual tests, yet with the 
will to tell the truth and present impartially the 
darkest shadows. It is because George Eliot's peo- 
ple are compounded with beautiful naturalness of 
good and bad — not hopelessly bad with Hetty, nor 
hopelessly good with Adam — that we understand 
them and love them. Here is an element of her 



I 



GEORGE ELIOT 229 

effectiveness. Even her Dinah walks with her feet 
firmly planted upon the earth, though her mystic 
vision may be skyward. 

With " Adam Bede " she came into her own. The 
" Clerical Scenes " had won critical plaudits : Dick- 
ens, in 1857 long settled in his seat of public idol- 
atry, wrote the unknown author a letter of apprecia- 
tion so warm-hearted, so generous, that it is hard 
to resist the pleasure of quoting it: it is interesting 
to remark that in despite the masculine pen-name, 
he attributed the work to a woman. But the public 
had not responded. With " Adam Bede " this was 
changed; the book gained speedy popularity, the 
author even meeting with that mixed compliment, a 
bogus claimant to its authorship. And so, greatly 
encouraged, and stimulated to do her best, she pro- 
duced " The Mill on the Floss," a novel, which, if 
not her finest, will always be placed high on her list 
of representative fiction. 

This time the story as such was stronger, there 
was more substance and variety because of the 
greater number of characters and their freer inter- 
play upon each other. Most important of all, when 
we look beyond the immediate reception by the public 
to its more permanent position, the work is decidedly 
more thoroughgoing in its psychology: it goes to 
the very core of personality, where the earlier book 
was in some instances satisfied with sketch-work. In 
" Adam Bede " the freshness comes from the treat- 



2S0 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

ment rather than the theme. The framework, a 
seduction story, is old enough — old as human nature 
and pre-literary story-telling. But in " The Mill 
on the Floss " we have the history of two inter- 
twined lives, contrasted types from within the con- 
fines of family life, bound by kin-love yet separated 
by temperament. It is the deepest, truest of trag- 
edy and we see that just this particular study of 
humanity had not been accomplished so exhaustively 
before in all the annals of fiction. As it happened, 
everything conspired to make the author at her best 
when she was writing this novel: as her letters show, 
her health was, for her, good: we have noted the 
stimulus derived from the reception of " Adam Bede " 
— which was as wine to her soul. Then — a fact 
which should never be forgotten — the tale is carried 
through logically and expresses, with neither palter- 
ing nor evasion, George Eliot's sense of life's tragedy. 
In the other book, on the contrary, a touch of the 
fictitious was introduced by Lewes ; Dinah and Adam 
were united to make at the end a mitigation of the 
painfulness of Hetty's downfall. Lewes may have 
been right in looking to the contemporary audience, 
but never again did Eliot yield to that form of the 
literary lie, the pleasant ending. She certainly did 
not in " The Mill on the Floss " : an element of its 
strength is its truth. The book, broadly considered, 
moves slow, with dramatic accelerando at cumu- 
lative moments ; it is the kind of narrative where 



GEORGE ELIOT 2S1 

this method is allowable without artistic sin. Another 
great excellence is the superb insight into the nature 
of childhood, boy and girl ; if Maggie is drawn with 
the more penetrating sympathy, Tom is finely ob- 
served: if the author never rebukes his limitations, 
she states them and, as it were, lifts hands to heaven 
to cry like a Greek chorus : " See these mortals love 
yet clash ! Behold, how havoc comes ! Eheu ! this 
mortal case ! " 

With humanity still pulling at her heart-strings, 
and conceiving fiction which offered more value of 
plot than before, George Eliot wrote the charming 
romance " Silas Marner," novelette in form, modern 
romance in its just mingling of truth and idealiza- 
tion: a work published the next year. She inter- 
rupted " Romola " to do it, which is suggestive as 
indicating absorption by the theme. This story 
offers a delightful blend of homely realism with poetic 
symbolism. The miser is wooed from his sordid 
love of gold by the golden glint of a little girl's 
hair: as love creeps into his starved heart, heartless 
greed goes out forever: before a soulless machine, 
he becomes a man. It is the world-old, still potent 
thought that the good can drive out the bad: a 
spiritual allegory in a series of vivid pictures carry- 
ing the wholesomest and highest of lessons. The 
artistic and didactic are here in happy union. And 
as nowhere else in her work (unless exception be 
made in the case of " Romola ") she sees a truth 



232 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

in terms of drama. To read the story is to feel 
its stage value: it is no surprise to know that several 
dramatizations of the book have been made. Aside 
from its central motive, the studies of homely village 
life, as well as of polite society, are in Eliot's best 
manner: the humor of Dolly Winthrop is as of ex- 
cellent vintage as the humor of Mrs. Poyser in 
" Adam Bede," yet with the necessary differentiation. 
The typical deep sympathy for common humanity — 
just average folks — permeates the handling. More- 
over, while the romance has a happy issue, as a 
romance should according to Stevenson, if it pos- 
sibly can, it does not differ in its view of life from 
so fatalistic a book as " The Mill on the Floss " ; for 
circumstances change Silas ; if the child Eppie had 
not come he might have remained a miser. It was 
not his will alone that revolutionized his life; what 
some would call luck was at work there. In " Silas 
Marner " the teaching is of a piece with that of all 
her representative work. 

But when we reach " Romola " there is a change, 
debatable ground is entered upon at once. Hitherto, 
the story-teller has mastered the preacher, although 
an ever more earnest soul has been expressing itself 
about Life. Now we enter the region of more self- 
conscious literary art, of planned work and study, 
and confront the possibility of flagging invention. 
Also, we leave the solid ground of contemporary 
themes and find the realist with her hang for truth, 



GEORGE ELIOT 253 

essaying an historical setting, an entirely new and 
foreign motive. Eliot had already proved her right 
to depict certain aspects of her own English life. 
To strive to exercise the same powers on a theme 
like " Romola " was a venturesome step. We have 
seen how Dickens and Thackeray essayed romance 
at least once with ringing success ; now the third 
major mid-century novelist was to try the same 
thing. 

It may be conceded at the start that in one im- 
portant respect this Florentine story of Savonarola 
and his day is entirely typical: it puts clearly before 
us in a medieval romantic mis-en scene, the problem 
of a soul: the slow, subtle, awful degeneration of 
the man Tito, with its foil in the noble figure of the 
girl Romola. The central personality psycholog- 
ically is that of the wily Greek-Italian, and Eliot 
never probed deeper into the labyrinths of the per- 
turbed human spirit than in this remarkable analysis. 
The reader, too, remembers gratefully, with a catch 
of the breath, the great scenes, two of which are 
the execution of Savonarola, and the final confronta- 
tion of Tito by his adoptive father, with its Greek- 
like sense of tragic doom. The same reader stands 
aghast before the labor which must lie behind such 
a work and often comes to him a sudden, vital sense 
of fifteenth century Florence, then, as never since, 
the Lily of the Arno: so cunningly and with such 
felicity are innumerable details individualized, massed 



2S4 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

and blended. And jet, somehow it all seems a splen- 
did experiment, a worthy performance rather than 
a spontaneous and successful creative endeavor : this, 
in comparison with the fiction that came before. The 
author seems a little over-burdened by the tremen- 
dousness of her material. Whether it is because the 
Savonarola episode is not thoroughly synthetized 
with the Tito-Romola part : or that the central theme 
is of itself fundamentally unpleasant — or again, that 
from the nature of the romance, head-work had 
largely to supplant that genial draught upon the 
springs of childhood which gave us " Adam Bede " 
and " The Mill on the Floss " ; — or once more, 
whether the crowded canvas injures the unity of the 
design, be these as they may, " Romola " strikes 
one as great in spots and as conveying a noble though 
somber truth, but does not carry us off our feet. 
That is the blunt truth about it, major work as 
it is, with only half a dozen of its kind to equal 
it in all English literature. It falls distinctly be- 
hind both " A Tale of Two Cities " and " Esmond." 
It is a book to admire, to praise in many particulars, 
to be impressed by: but not quite to treasure as one 
treasures the story of the Tullivers. It was written 
by George Eliot, famous novelist, who with that 
anxious, morbid conscience of hers, had to live up to 
her reputation, and who received $50,000 for the 
work, even to-day a large sum for a piece of fiction. 
It was not written by a woman irresistibly impelled 



GEORGE ELIOT 235 

to self-expression, seized with the passionate desire 
to paint Life. It is, in a sense, her first professional 
feat and performance. 

Meanwhile, she was getting on in life: we saw that 
she was seven and thirty when she wrote the " Cler- 
ical Scenes " : it was almost a decade later when 
" Felix Holt, Radical " appeared, and she was near- 
ing fifty. I believe it to be helpful to draw a line 
between all her fiction before and after " Felix Holt," 
placing that book somewhat uncertainly on the di- 
viding line. The four earlier novels stand for a 
period when there is a strong, or at least sufficient 
story interest, the proper amount of objectification: 
to the second division belong " Middlemarch " and 
" Daniel Deronda," where we feel that problem comes 
first and story second. In the intermediate novel, 
" Felix Holt," its excellent story places it with the 
first books, but its increased didactic tendency with 
the latest stories. Why has " Felix Holt " been 
treated by the critics, as a rule, as of comparatively 
minor value .'^ It is very interesting, contains true 
characterization, much of picturesque and dramatic 
worth; it abounds in enjoyable first-hand observation 
of a period by-gone yet near enough to have been 
cognizant to the writer. Her favorite types, too, 
are in it. Holt, a study of the advanced workman 
of his day, is another Bede, mutatis mutandis, and 
quite as truly realized. Both Mr. Lyon and his 
daughter are capitally drawn and the motive of the 



286 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

novel — to teach Felix that he can be quite as true 
to his cause if he be less rough and eccentric in dress 
and deportment, is a good one handled with success. 
To which may be added that the encircling theme 
of Mrs. Transome's mystery, grips the attention 
from the start and there is pleasure when it is seen 
to involve Esther, leading her to make a choice which 
reveals that she has awakened to a truer valuation 
of life — and of Felix. With all these things in its 
favor, why has appreciation been so scant.? 

Is it not that continually in the narrative you 
lose its broader human interest because of the nar- 
rower political and social questions that are raised.'* 
They are vital questions, but still, more specific, 
technical, of the time. Nor is their weaving into 
the more permanent theme altogether skilful: you 
feel like exclaiming to the novelist : " O, let Kingsley 
handle chartism, but do you stick to your last — 
love and its criss-cross, family sin and its outcome, 
character changed as life comes to be more vitally 
realized." George Eliot in this fine story falls into 
this mistake, as does Mrs. Humphry Ward in her 
well-remembered " Robert Elsmere," and as she has 
again in the novel which happens to be her latest 
as these words are written, " Marriage a la Mode." 
The thesis has a way of sticking out obtrusively in 
such efforts. 

Many readers may not feel this in " Felix Holt," 
which, whatever its shortcomings, remains an ex- 



GEORGE ELIOT 237 

tremely able and interesting novel, often underesti- 
mated. Still, I imagine a genuine distinction has 
been made with regard to it. 

The difference is more definitely felt in " Middle- 
march," not infrequently called Eliot's masterpiece. 
It appeared five years later and the author was over 
fifty when the book was published serially during 
1871 and 1872. Nearly four years were spent in 
the work of composition: for it the sum of $60,000 
was paid. 

" Middlemarch," which resembles Thackeray's 
" Vanity Fair " in telling two stories not closely re- 
lated, seems less a Novel than a chronicle-history of 
two families. It is important to remember that its 
two parts were conceived as independent; their weld- 
ing, to call it such, was an afterthought. The 
tempo again, suiting the style of fiction, is leisurely: 
character study, character contrast, is the principal 
aim. More definitely, the marriage problem, il- 
lustrated by Dorothea's experience with Casaubon, 
and that of Lydgate with Rosamond, is what the 
writer places before us. Marriage is chosen simply 
because it is the modern spiritual battleground, a 
condition for the trying-out of souls. The greatness 
of the work lies in its breadth (subjective more 
than objective), its panoramic view of English coun- 
try life of the refined type, its rich garner of wisdom 
concerning human motive and action. We have seen 
in earlier studies that its type, the chronicle of events 



238 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

as they affect character, is a legitimate one: a suc- 
cessful genus in English-speaking fiction in hands 
like those of Thackeray, Eliot and Howells. It 
is one accepted kind, a distinct, often able, sympa- 
thetic kind of fiction of our race: its worth as a 
social document (to use the convenient term once 
more) is likely to be high. It lacks the close-knit 
plot, the feeling for stage effect, the swift progres- 
sion and the sense of completed action which another 
and more favored sort of Novel exhibits. Yet it may 
have as much chance of permanence in the hands 
of a master. The proper question, then, seems to 
be whether it most fitly expresses the genius of an 
author. 

Perhaps there will never be general agreement as 
to this in the case of " Middlemarch." The book 
is drawn from wells of experience not so deep in 
Eliot's nature as those which went to the making 
of " Adam Bede " and " The Mill on the Floss," It 
is life with which the author became familiar in 
London and about the world during her later literary 
days. She knows it well, and paints it with her usual 
noble insistence upon truth. But she knows it with 
her brain; whereas, she knows "The Mill on the 
Floss " with her blood. There is surely that difference. 
Hence, the latter work has, it would seem, a better 
chance for long life ; for, without losing the author's 
characteristic interpretation, it has more story-value, 
is richer in humor (that alleviating ingredient of all 



GEORGE ELIOT 239 

fiction) and is a better work of art. It shows George 
Eliot absorbed in story-telling : " Middlemarch " is 
George Eliot using a slight framework of story for 
the sake of talking about life and illustrating by 
character. Those who call it her masterpiece are 
not judging it primarily as art-work: any more 
than those who call Whitman the greatest American 
poet are judging him as artist. While it seems 
necessary to make this distinction, it is quite as 
necessary to bear down on the attraction of the 
character-drawing. That is a truly wonderful por- 
trait of the unconsciously selfish scholar in Casaubon. 
Dorothea's noble naturalness, Will Ladislaw's fiery 
truth, the verity of Rosamond's bovine mediocrity, 
the fine reality of Lydgate's situation, so portentous 
in its demand upon the moral nature — all this, and 
more than this, is admirable and authoritative. The 
predominant thought in closing such a study is that 
of the tremendous complexity of human fate, in- 
fluenced as it is by heredity, environment and the 
personal equation, and not without melioristic hope, 
if we but live up to our best. The tone is grave, 
but not hopeless. The quiet, hesitant movement 
helps the sense of this slow sureness in the working 
of the social law: 

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, 
Yet they grind exceeding small." 

In her final novel, " Daniel Deronda," between 
which and " Middlemarch " there were six years. 



240 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

so that it was published when the author was nearly 
sixty years old, we have another large canvas upon 
which, in great detail and with admirable variety, 
is displayed a composition that does not aim at 
complete unity — or at any rate, does not accomplish 
it, for the motive is double: to present the Jew so 
that Judenhetze may be diminished: and to exhibit 
the spiritual evolution through a succession of emo- 
tional experiences of the girl Gwendolen. This 
phase of the story offers an instructive parallel with 
Meredith's " Diana of the Crossways." If the Jew 
theme had been made secondary artistically to the 
Gwendolen study, the novel would have secured a 
greater degree of constructive success ; but there's 
the rub. Now it seems the main issue; again, Gwen- 
dolen holds the center of the stage. The result 
is a suspicion of patchwork; nor is this changed by 
the fact that both parts are brilliantly done — to 
which consideration may be added the well-known 
antipathy of many Gentile readers to any treatment 
of the Jew in fiction, if an explanation be sought 
of the relative slighting of a very noble book. 

For it has virtues, many and large. Its spirit 
is broad, tolerant, wide and loving. In no previous 
Eliot fiction are there finer single effects: no one 
is likely to forget the scene in which Gwendolen 
and Harcourt come to a rupture ; or the scene of De- 
ronda's dismissal. And in the way of character 
portrayal, nothing is keener and truer than the hero- 



GEORGE ELIOT 241 

ine of this book, whose unawakened, seemingly light, 
nature is chastened and deepened as she slowly learns 
the meaning of life. The lesson is sound and sal- 
utary: it is set forth so vividly as to be immensely 
impressive. Mordecai, against the background nec- 
essary to show him, is sketched with splendid power. 
And the percentage of quotable sayings, sword- 
thrusts, many of them, into the vitals of life, is as 
high perhaps as in any other of the Novels, unless 
it be " Middlemarch." Nevertheless those who point 
to " Deronda " as illustrating the novelist's decad- 
ence — although they use too harsh a word — have 
some right on their side. For, viewed as story, 
it is not so successful as the books of the first half 
of George Eliot's career. It all depends whether 
a vital problem Novel is given preference over a Novel 
which does not obtrude message, if it have any at 
all. And if fiction be a fine art, it must be confessed 
that this latter sort is superior. But we have per- 
fect liberty to admire the elevation, earnestness and 
skill en detail that denote such a work. Nay, we 
may go further and say that the woman who wrote 
it is greater than she who wrote " The Mill on the 
Floss." 

With a backward glance now at the list, it may 
be said in summary that the earlier fiction constitutes 
George Eliot's most authoritative contribution to 
English novel-making, since the thinking about life 
so characteristic of her is kept within the bounds 



242 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

of good storj-telling. And the compensation for 
this artistic loss in her later fiction is found in its 
wider intellectual outlook, its deeper sympathy, the 
more profound humanity of the message. 

But what of her philosophy? She was not a pessi- 
mist, since the pessimist is one who despairs of 
human virtue and regards the world as paralyzing 
the will nobly to achieve. She was, rather, a melio- 
rist who hoped for better things, though tardy to 
come ; who believed, in her own pungent phrase, " in 
the slow contagion of good." Of human happiness 
she did in one of her latest moods despair: going 
so far in a dark moment as to declare that the only 
ideal left her was duty. In a way, she grew sadder 
as she grew older. By intellect she was a positivist 
who has given up any definite hope of personal im- 
mortality — save that which by a metaphor is applied 
to one's influence upon the life of the world here upon 
earth. And in her own career, by her unconventional 
union with Lewes, she made a questionable choice of 
action, though from the highest motives ; a choice 
which I believe rasped her sensitive soul because of 
the way it was regarded by many whom she respected 
and whose good opinion she coveted. But she re- 
mained splendidly wholesome and inspiring in her 
fiction, because she clung to her faith in spiritual 
self-development, tested all life by the test of duty, 
felt the pathos and the preciousness of inconspicuous 
lives, and devoted herself through a most exceptional 



GEORGE ELIOT 243 

career to loving service for others. She was there- 
fore not only a novelist of genius, but a profoundly 
good woman. She had an ample practical credo 
for living and will always be, for those who read 
with their mind and soul as well as their eyes, any- 
thing but a depressing writer. For them, on the 
contrary, she will be a tonic force, a seer using fiction 
as a means to an end — and that end the betterment 
of mankind. 



CHAPTER XI 

TROLLOPE AND OTHERS 

Five or six writers of fiction, none of whom has 
attained a position like that of the three great Vic- 
torians already considered, yet all of whom loomed 
large in their day, have met with unequal treat- 
ment at the hands of time: Bulwer Lytton, Disraeli, 
Reade, Trollope, Kingsley. And the Brontes might 
well be added to the list. The men are mentioned 
in the order of their birth ; yet it seems more natural 
to place Trollope last, not at all because he lived 
to 188S, while Kingsley died seven years earlier. 
Reade lived two years after Trollope, but seems 
chronologically far before him as a novelist. In 
the same way, Disraeli and Bulwer Lytton, as we 
now look back upon them, appear to be figures of 
another age; though the former lived to within a 
few years of Trollope, and the latter died but two 
years before Kingsley. Of course, the reason 
that Disraeli impresses us as antiquated where Trol- 
lope looks thoroughly modern, is because the latter 
is nearest our own day in method, temper and aim. 
And this is the main reason why he has best survived 
the shocks of time and is seen to be the most sig- 

244 



TROLLOPE AND OTHERS 245 

nificant figure of an able and interesting group. Be- 
fore he is examined, something may be said of the 
others. 

In a measure, the great reputation enjoyed by the 
remaining writers was secured in divisions of liter- 
ature other than fiction; or derived from activities 
not literary at all. Thus Beaconsfield was Premier, 
Bulwer was noted as poet and dramatist, and eminent 
in diplomacy ; Kingsley a leader in Church and State. 
They were men with many irons in the fire : naturally, 
it took some years to separate their literary im- 
portance pure and simple from the other accomplish- 
ments that swelled their fame. Reade stood some- 
what more definitely for literature; and Trollope, 
although his living was gained for years as a public 
servant, set his all of reputation on the single throw 
of letters. He is Anthony Trollope, Novelist, or 
he is nothing. 



Thinking of Disraeli as a maker of stories, one 
reads of his immense vogue about the middle of the 
last century and reflects sagely upon the change of 
literary fashions. The magic is gone for the reader 
now. Such claim as he can still make is most favor- 
ably estimated by " Coningsby," " Sybil " and 
" Tancred," all published within four years, and 
constituting a trilogy of books in which the follies 



246 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

of polite society and the intimacies of politics are 
portrayed with fertility and facility. The earlier 
" Henrietta Temple " and " Venetia," however fervid 
in feeling and valuable for the delineation of con- 
temporary character, are not so characteristic. Nor 
are the novels of his last years, " Lothair " and 
" Endymion," in any way better than those of his 
younger days. That the political trilogy have still 
a certain value as studies of the time is beyond 
argument. Also, they have wit, invention and a 
richly pictorial sense for setting, together with flam- 
boyant attraction of style and a solid substratum of 
thought. One recognizes often that an athletic mind 
is at play in them. But they do not now take hold, 
whatever they once did; an air of the false-literary 
is over them, it is not easy to read them as true 
transcripts from life. To get a full sense of this, 
turn to literally contemporaneous books like Dick- 
ens' "David Copperfield" and "Hard Times"; 
compared with such, Disraeli and all his world seem 
clever pastiche. Personal taste may modify this 
statement: it can hardly reverse it. It would be 
futile to explain the difference by saying that Dis- 
raeli was some eight years before Dickens or that 
he dealt with another and higher class of society. 
The difference goes deeper: it is due to the fact that 
one writer was writing in the spirit of the age with 
his face to the future and so giving a creative 
representation of its life; whereas the other was 



TROLLOPE AND OTHERS 247 

painting its manners and only half in earnest: play- 
ing with literature, in sooth. A man like Dickens 
is married to his art; Disraeli indulges in a tempo- 
rary liaison with letters. There is, too, in the 
Lothair-Endymion kind of literature a fatal resem- 
blance to the older sentimental and grandiose fiction 
of the eighteenth century: an effect of plush and 
padding, an atmosphere of patchouli and sachet 
powder. It has the limitation that fashion ever 
sets ; it is boudoir novel-writing : cabinet literature 
in both the social and political sense. As Agnes 
Repplier has it : " Lothair is beloved by the female 
aristocracy of Great Britain ; and mysterious ladies, 
whose lofty souls stoop to no conventionalities, die 
happy with his kisses on their lips." It would be 
going too far perhaps to say that this type never 
existed in life, for Richardson seems to have 
had a model in mind in drawing Grandison ; but it 
hardly survives in letters, unless we include " St, 
Elmo " and " Under Two Flags " in that denomina- 
tion. 

To sum it all up: For most of us Disraeli has 
become hard reading. This is not to say that he 
cannot still be read with profit as one who gives us 
insight concerning his day ; but his gorgeous pictures 
and personages have faded woefully, where Trol- 
lope's are as bright as ever; and the latter is right 
when he said that Lord Beaconsfield's creatures 
*' have a flavor of paint and unreality." 



248 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

n 

Bulwer Lytton has likewise lost ground greatly: 
but read to-day he has much more to offer. In 
him, too, may be seen an imperfectly blent mixture 
of by-gone sentimentality and modern truth: yet 
whether in the romance of historic setting, " The 
Last Days of Pompeii," or in the satiric study of 
realism, like " My Novel," Bulwer is much nearer 
to us, and holds out vital literature for our apprecia- 
tion. It is easy to name faults both in romance 
and realism of his making: but the important thing 
to acknowledge is that he still appeals, can be read 
with a certain pleasure. His most mature work, 
moreover, bears testimony to the coming creed of 
fiction, as Disraeli's never does. There are moments 
with Bulwer when he almost seems a fellow of Mere- 
dith's. I recall with amusement the classroom re- 
mark of a college professor to the effect that " My 
Novel " was the greatest fiction in English literature. 
While the freshmen to whom this was addressed did 
not appreciate the generous erraticism of the judg- 
ment, even now one of them sees that, coming as it 
did from a clergyman of genial culture, a true lover 
of literature and one to inspire that love in others — 
even in freshmen ! — it could hardly have been spoken 
concerning a mere man-milliner of letters. Bulwer 
produced too much and in too many kinds to do 
his best in all — or in any one. But most of us sooner 



TROLLOPE AND OTHERS 249 

or later have been in thrall to " Kenelm Chillingly " 
or thrilled to that masterly horror story, " The 
House and the Brain." There is pinchbeck with 
the gold, but the shining true metal is there. 

in 

To pass to Kingsley, is like turning from the world 
to the kingdom of God : all is religious fervor, human- 
itarian purpose. Here again the activity is multiple 
but the dominant spirit is that of militant Christian- 
ity. Outside of the Novel, Kingsley has left in 
" Water Babies " a book deserving the name of 
modern classic, unless the phrase be a contradiction 
in terms. " Alton Locke," read to-day, is felt to 
be too much the tract to bear favorable comparison 
with Eliot's " Felix Holt " ; but it has literary power 
and noble sincerity. Kingsley is one of the first to 
feel the ground-swell of social democracy which was 
to sweep later fiction on its mighty tide. "West- 
ward Ho ! " is a sterling historical romance, one of 
the more successful books in a select list which em- 
braces " The Cloister and the Hearth," " Loma 
Doone," and "John Inglesant." " Hypatia," ex- 
amined dispassionately, may be described as an his- 
torical romance with elements of greatness rather 
than a great historical romance. But it shed its 
glamour over our youth and there is affectionate 
dread in the thought of a more critical re-reading. 



250 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

In truth, Kingsley, viewed in all his literary work, 
stands out as an athlete of the intellect and the emo- 
tions, doing much and doing it remarkably well — a 
power for righteousness in his day and generation, 
but for this very reason less a professional novelist 
of assured standing. His gifted, erratic brother 
Henry, in the striking series of stories dealing pre- 
vailingly with the Australian life he so well knew, 
makes a stronger impression of singleness of power 
and may last longer, one suspects, than the better- 
known, more successful Charles, whose significance 
for the later generation is, as we have hinted, in his 
sensitiveness to the new spirit of social revolt, — an 
isolated voice where there is now full chorus. 

IV 

An even more virile figure and one to whom the 
attribution of genius need not be grudged, is the 
strong, pugnacious, eminently picturesque Charles 
Reade. It is a temptation to say that but for his use 
of a method and a technique hopelessly old-fashioned, 
he might claim close fellowship for gift and influence 
with Dickens. But he lacked art as it is now under- 
stood: balance, restraint, the impersonal view were 
not his. He is a glorious but imperfect phenomenon, 
back there in the middle century. He worked in a 
way deserving of the descriptive phrase once applied 
to Macaulay — " a steam engine in breeches ; " he put 



TROLLOPE AND OTHERS 251 

enough belief and heart into his fiction to float any 
literary vessel upon the treacherous waters of fame. 
He had, of the more specific qualities of a novelist, 
racy idiom, power in creating character and a re- 
markable gift for plot and dramatic scene. His 
frankly melodramatic novels like " A Terrible Temp- 
tation " are among the best of their kind, and in 
" The Cloister and the Hearth " he performed the 
major literary feat of reconstructing, with the large 
imagination and humanity which obliterate any effect 
of archeology and worked-up background, a period 
long past. And what reader of English fiction does 
not harbor more than kindly sentiments for those 
very different yet equally lovable women, Christie 
Johnstone and Peg Woffington? To run over his 
contributions thus is to feel the heart grow warm 
towards the sturdy story-teller. Reade also played 
a part, as did Kingsley, in the movement for recogni- 
tion of the socially unfit and those unfairly treated. 
" Put Yourself in His Place," with its early word 
on the readjustment of labor troubles, is typical of 
much that he strove to do. Superb partisan that 
he was, it is probable that had he cared less for 
polemics and more for his art, he would have secured 
a safer position in the annals of fiction. He can 
always be taken up and enjoyed for his earnest con- 
viction or his story for the story's sake, even if on 
more critical evaluations he comes out not so well 
as men of lesser caliber. 



252 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 



The writer of the group who has consistently 
gained ground and has come to be generally recog- 
nized as a great artist, a force in English fiction 
both for influence and pleasure-giving power, is 
Anthony Trollope. He is vital to-day and strength- 
ening his hold upon the readers of fiction. The 
quiet, cultivated folk in whose good opinion lies the 
destiny of really worthy literature, are, as a rule, 
friendly to Trollope; not seldom they are devoted to 
him. Such people peruse him in an enjoy ably rumi- 
native way at their meals, or read him in the neglige 
of retirement. He is that cosy, enviable thing, a 
bedside author. He is above all a story-teller for 
the middle-aged and it is his good fortune to be able 
to sit and wait for us at that half-way house, — since 
we all arrive. Of course, to say this is to acknowl- 
edge his limitations. He does not appeal strongly 
to the young, though he never forgets to tell a love 
story; but he is too placid, matter-of-fact, unro- 
mantic for them. But if he do not shake us with 
lyric passion, he is always interesting and he wears 
uncommonly well. That his popularity is extend- 
ing is testified to by new editions and publishers' 
hullabaloo over his work. 

Such a fate is deserved by him, for Trollope is 
one of the most consummate masters of that common- 
place which has become the modern fashion — and 



TROLLOPE AND OTHERS 253 

fascination. He has a wonderful power in the realism 
which means getting close to the fact and the average 
without making them uninteresting. So, naturally, 
as realism has gained he has gained. No one except 
Jane Austen has surpassed him in this power of 
truthful portrayal, and he has the advantage of be- 
ing practically of our own day. He insisted that 
fiction should be objective, and refused to intrude 
himself into the story, showing himself in this respect 
a better artist than Thackeray, whom he much ad- 
mired but frankly criticized. He was unwilling to 
pause and harangue his audience in rotund voice after 
the manner of Dickens. First among modern novel- 
ists, Trollope stands invisible behind his characters, 
and this, as we have seen, was to become one of the 
articles of the modern creed of fiction. He affords 
us that peculiar pleasure which is derived from seeing 
in a book what we instantly recognize as familiar to 
us in life. Just why the pleasure, may be left to the 
psychologists; but it is of indisputable charm, and 
Trollope possesses it. We may talk wisely and at 
length of his commonplaceness, lack of spice, philist- 
inism; he can be counted on to amuse us. He lived 
valiantly up to his own injunction: "Of all the 
needs a book has, the chief need is that it is 
readable." A simple test, this, but a terrible one 
that has slain its thousands. No nineteenth cen- 
tury maker of stories is safer in the matter of 
keeping the attention. If the book can be easily 



254. MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

laid down, it is always agreeable to take it up 
again. 

Trollope set out in the most systematic way to 
produce a series of novels illustrating certain sections 
of England, certain types of English society; stead- 
ily, for a life-time, with the artisan's skilful hand, he 
labored at the craft. He is the very antithesis of 
the erraticisms and irregularities of genius. He went 
to his daily stint of work, by night and day, on sea 
or land, exactly as the merchant goes to his office, 
the mechanic to his shop. He wrote with a watch 
before him, two hundred and fifty words to fifteen 
minutes. But he had the most unusual faculty of 
direct, unprejudiced, clear observation; he trained 
himself to set down what he saw and to remember it. 
And he also had the constructive ability to shape and 
carry on his story so as to create the effect of growth, 
along with an equally valuable power of sympathetic 
characterization, so that you know and understand 
his folk. Add to this a style perfectly accordant 
wath the unobtrusive harmony of the picture, and the 
main elements of Trollope's appeal have been enum- 
erated. Yet has he not been entirely explained. 
His art — meaning the skilled handling of his material 
— can hardly be praised too much; it is so easy to 
underestimate because it is so unshowy. Few had a 
nicer sense of scale and tone ; he gets his effects often 
because of this harmony of adjustment. For one 
example, " The Warden " is a relatively short piece 



TROLLOPE AND OTHERS 255 

of fiction which opens the famous Chronicles of 
Earset series. Its interest culminates in the going 
of the Reverend Septimus Harding to London 
from his quiet country home, in order to prevent a 
young couple from marrying. The whole situation 
is tiny, a mere corner flurry. But so admirably has 
the climax been prepared, so organic is it to all that 
went before in the way of preparation, that the result 
is positively thrilling: a wonderful example of the 
principle of key and relation. 

Or again, in that scene which is a favorite with all 
Trollope's readers, where the arrogant Mrs. Proudie 
is rebuked by the gaunt Mr. Crawley, the effect of 
his famous " Peace, woman ! " is tremendous only 
because it is a dash of vivid red in a composition 
where the general color scheme is low and subdued. 

In view of this faculty, it will not do to regard 
Trollope as a kind of mechanic who began one novel 
the day he finished another and often carried on two 
or three at the same time, like a juggler with his 
balls, with no conception of them as artistic wholes. 
He says himself that he began a piece of fiction 
with no full plan. But, with his very obvious skill 
prodigally proved from his work, we may beg leave 
to take all such statements in a qualified sense: for 
the kind of fiction he aimed at he surely developed a 
technique not only adequate but of very unusual 
excellence. 

Trollope was a voluminous writer: he gives in his 



^56 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

delightful autobiography the list of his own works 
and it numbers upwards of sixty titles, of which over 
forty are fiction. His capacity for writing, judged 
by mere bulk, appears to have been inherited; for 
his mother, turning authoress at fifty years of age, 
produced no less than one hundred and fourteen 
volumes! There is inferior work, and plenty of it, 
among the sum-total of his activity, but two series, 
amounting to about twenty books, include the fiction 
upon which his fame so solidly rests: the Cathedral 
series and the Parliamentary series. In the former, 
choosing the southern-western counties of Wiltshire 
and Hants as Hardy chose Wessex for his peculiar 
venue, he described the clerical life of his land as it 
had never been described before, showing the type as 
made up of men like unto other men, unromantic, 
often this-worldly and smug, yet varying the type, 
making room for such an idealist as Crawley as well 
as for sleek bishops and ecclesiastical wire-pullers. 
Neither his young women nor his holy men are over- 
drawn a jot: they have the continence of Nature. 
But they are not cynically presented. You like them 
and take pleasure in their society ; they are so beauti- 
fully true ! The inspiration of these studies came to 
him as he walked under the shadow of Salisbury 
Cathedral; and one is never far away from the in- 
fluence of the cathedral class. The life is the worldy- 
godly life of that microcosm, a small, genteel, con- 
ventional urban society; in sharp contrast with the 



TROLLOPE AND OTHERS 257 

life depicted by Hardy in the same part of the land, — 
but like another world, because his portraiture finds 
its subjects among peasant-folk and yeoman — the 
true primitive types whose speech is slow and their 
roots deep down in the soil. 

The realism of Trollope was not confined to the 
mere reproduction of externals ; he gave the illusion 
of character, without departing from what can be 
verified by what men know. His photographs were 
largely imaginary, as all artistic work must be; he 
constructed his stories out of his own mind. But 
all is based on what may be called a splendidly 
reasoned and reasonable experience with Life. His 
especial service was thus to instruct us about English 
society, without tedium, within a domain which was 
voluntarily selected for his own. In this he was 
also a pioneer in that local fiction which is a geo- 
graphical effect of realism. And to help him in this 
setting down of what he believed to be true of human- 
ity, was a style so lucid and simple as perfectly to 
serve his purpose. For unobtrusive ease, idiomatic 
naturalness and that familiarity which escapes vul- 
garity and retains a quiet distinction, no one has 
excelled him. It is one reason why we feel an 
intimate knowledge of his characters. Mr. Howells 
declares it is Trollope who is most like Austen " in 
simple honesty and instinctive truth, as unphiloso- 
phized as the light of common day " — though he goes 
on to deplore that he too often preferred to be " like 



258 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

the caricaturist Thackeray " — a somewhat hard say- 
ing. It is a particular comfort to read such a writer 
when intensely personal psychology is the order of 
the day and neither style nor interpretation in fiction 
is simple. 

If Trollope can be said to be derivative at all, 
it is Thackeray who most influenced him. He avows 
his admiration, wrote the other's life, and deemed 
him one had advanced truth-telling in the Novel. 
Yet, as was stated, he did not altogether approve 
of the Master, thinking his satire too steady a view 
instead of an occasional weapon. Indeed his strict- 
ures in the biography have at times a cool, almost 
hostile sound. He may or may not have taken a 
hint from Thackeray on the re-introduction of char- 
acters in other books — a pleasant device long ante- 
dating the nineteenth century, since one finds it in 
Lyly's " Euphues." Trollope also disliked Dickens' 
habit of exaggeration (as he thought it) even when 
it was used in the interests of reform, and satirized 
the tendency in the person of Mr. Popular Sentiment 
in "The Warden." 

The more one studies Trollope and the farther 
he recedes into the past, the firmer grows the con- 
viction that he is a very distinctive figure of Vic- 
torian fiction, a pioneer who led the way and was to 
be followed by a horde of secondary realistic novel- 
ists who could imitate his methods but not reproduce 
his pleasant effect. 



TROLLOPE AND OTHERS 259 

VI 

The Brontes, coming when they did, before 1850, 
are a curious study. Realism was growing daily and 
destined to be the fashion of the literary to-morrow. 
But " Jane Eyre " is the product of Charlotte 
Bronte's isolation, her morbidly introspective nature, 
her painful sense of personal duty, the inextinguish- 
able romance that was hers as the leal descendant 
of a race of Irish story-tellers. She looked up to 
and worshipped Thackeray, but produced fiction that 
was like something from another world. She and 
her sisters, especially Emily, whose vivid " Wuthering 
Heights " has all the effect of a visitant from a re- 
mote planet, are strangely unrelated to the general 
course of the nineteenth century. They seem born 
out of time; they would have left a more lasting 
impress upon English fiction had they come before — 
or after. There are unquestionable qualities of real- 
ism in " Jane Eyre," but it is romantic to the core, 
sentimental, melodramatic. Rochester is an elder 
St. Elmo — hardly truer as a human being; Jane's 
sacrificial worship goes back to the eighteenth cen- 
tury; and that famous mad-woman's shriek in the 
night is a moment to be boasted of on the Bowery. 
And this was her most typical book, that which gave 
her fame. The others, " Villette " and the rest, are 
more truly representative of the realistic trend of 
the day, but withal though interesting, less char- 



260 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

acteristic, less liked. In proportion as she is ro- 
mantic is she remembered. The streak of genius in 
these gifted women must not blind us to the isolation, 
the unrelated nature of their work to the main course 
of the Novel. They are exceptions to the rule. 



VII 



This group then of novelists, sinking all individual 
differences, marks the progress of the method of 
realism over the romance. Scarcely one is conspicu- 
ous for achievement in the latter, while almost all 
of them did yeoman service in the former. In some 
cases — those of Disraeli and Bulwer — the transition 
is seen where their earlier and later work is con- 
trasted ; with a writer like Trollope, the newer method 
completely triumphs. Even in so confirmed a ro- 
mance-maker as Wilkie Collins, to whom plot was 
everything and whose cunning of hand in this is 
notorious, there is a concession to the new ideal of 
Truth. He was touched by his time in the matter 
of naturalness of dialogue, though not of event. 
Wildly improbable and wooden as his themes may 
now seem, their manner is realistic, realism of speech, 
in fact, being an element in his effectivism. Even 
the author of " The Moonstone " is scotched by the 
spirit of the age, and in the preface to " Armsdale " 
declares for a greater freedom of theme — one of the 
first announcements of that desire for an extension 



TROLLOPE AND OTHERS 261 

of the subject-matter which was in the next genera- 
tion to bring such a change. 

It seems just to represent all these secondary nov- 
elists as subsidiary to Dickens, Thackeray and Eliot. 
Fascinating isolated figures like Borrow, who will 
always be cherished by the few, are perforce passed 
by. We are trying to keep both quality and in- 
fluence in mind, with the desire to show the writers 
not by themselves alone but as part of a stream of 
tendency which has made the English Novel the dis- 
tinct form it is to-day. Even a resounding genius, 
in this view, may have less meaning than an apparent 
plodder like Trollope, who, as time goes by, is seen 
more clearly to be one of the shaping forces in the 
development of a literary form. 



CHAPTER XII 

HARDY AND MEREDITH 

We have seen in chapter seventh, how the influence 
of Balzac introduced to modern fiction that extension 
of subject and that preference for the external fact 
widely productive of change in the novel-making of 
the continent and of English-speaking lands. As the 
year 1830 was given significance by him, so, a genera- 
tion later, the year 1870 was given significance by 
Zola. England, like other lands cultivating the Novel, 
felt the influence. Balzac brought to fiction a greater 
franchise of theme : Zola taught it to regard a human 
being — individual or collectively social — as primarily 
animal : that is, he explains action on this hypothesis. 
And as an inevitable consequence, realism passed to 
the so-called naturalism. Zola believed in this view 
as a theory and his practice, not always consistent 
with it, was sufficiently so in the famous Rougon- 
Macquart series of novels begun the year of the 
Franco-Prussian war, to establish it as a method, 
and a school of fiction. Naturalism, linking hands 
with Vart pour art — " a fine phrase is a moral action 
— there is no other morality in literature," cried Zola 
— became a banner-cry, with " the flesh is all " its 

263 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 263 

chief article of belief. No study of the growth of 
English fiction can ignore this typical modem move- 
ment, however unpleasant it may be to follow it. 
The baser and more brutal phases of the Novel con- 
tinental and insular look to this derivation. Zola's 
remarkable pronunciamento " The Experimental 
Novel," proves how honestly he espoused the doctrine 
of the realist, how blind he is to its partial view. 
His attempt to subject the art of fiction to the exact 
laws of science, is an illustration of the influence 
of scientific thought upon a mind not broadly cul- 
tured, though of unusual native quality. Realism 
of the modern kind — the kind for which Zola stands 
— is the result in a form of literature of the necessary 
intellectual unrest following on the abandonment of 
older religious ideals. Science had forced men to 
give up certain theological conceptions ; death, im- 
mortality, God, Man, — these were all diff'erently un- 
derstood, and a period of readjustment, doubt and 
negation, of misery and despair, was the natural 
issue. Man, being naturally religious, was sure 
sooner or later to secure a new and more hopeful 
faith: it was a matter of spiritual self-preservation. 
But realism in letters, for the moment, before a new 
theory had been formulated, was a kind of pis aller 
by which literature could be produced and attention 
given to the tangible things of this earth, many of 
them not before thoroughly exploited; the things of 
the mind, of the Spirit, were certain to be exploited 



264 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

later, when a broader creed should come. The new 
romanticism and idealism of our day marks this 
return. Zola's theory is now seen to be wrong, and 
there has followed a violent reaction from the realistic 
tenets, even in Paris, its citadel. But for some years, 
it held tyrannous sway and its leader was a man of 
genius, his work distinctive, remarkable; at its best, 
great, — in spite of, rather than because of, his 
principles. It was in the later Trilogy of the cities 
that, using a broader formula, he came into full ex- 
pression of what was in him; during the last years 
of his life he was moving, both as man and artist, 
in the right direction. Yet naturally it was novels 
like " Nana " and " L'Assomoir " that gave him his 
vogue ; and their obsession with the fleshly gave them 
for the moment a strange distinction: for years their 
author was regarded as the founder of a school and 
its most formidable exponent. He wielded an influ- 
ence that rarely falls to a maker of stories. And 
although realism in its extreme manifestations no 
longer holds exclusive sway, Zola's impulse is still 
at work in the modem Novel. Historically, his name 
will always be of interest. 



Thomas Hardy is a realist in a sense true of no 
English novelist of anything like equal rank pre- 
ceding him: his literary genealogy is French, for his 
" Jude The Obscure " has no English prototype. 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 265 

except the earlier work of George Moore, whose in- 
spiration is even more definitely Paris. To study 
Hardy's development for a period of about twenty- 
five years from " Under the Greenwood Tree " to 
" Jude," is to review, as they are expressed in the 
work of one great English novelist, the literary ideals 
before and after Zola. Few will cavil at the in- 
clusion in our study of a living author like Hardy. 
His work ranks with the most influential of our 
time; so much may be seen already. His writing of 
fiction, moreover, or at least of Novels, seems to be 
finished. And like Meredith, he is a man of genius 
and, strictly speaking, a finer artist than the elder 
author. For quality, then, and significance of ac- 
complishment. Hardy may well be examined with the 
masters whose record is rounded out by death. He 
offers a fine example of the logic of modern realism, 
as it has been applied by a first-class mind to the art 
of fiction. In Meredith, on the contrary, is shown 
a sort of synthesis of the realistic and poetic-philo- 
sophic interpretation. Hardy is for this reason 
easier to understand and explain; Meredith refuses 
classification. 

The elements of strength in Thomas Hardy can 
be made out clearly; they are not elusive. Wisely, 
he has chosen to do a very definite thing and, with 
rare perseverance and skill, he has done it. He 
selected as setting the south-western part of England 
— ^Wessex, is the ancient name he gave it — ^that em- 



266 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

braces Somersetshire and contiguous counties, be- 
cause he felt that the types of humanity and the 
view of life he wished to show could best be thrown 
out against the primitive background. Certain ele- 
mental truths about men and women, he believed, lost 
sight of in the kaleidoscopic attritions of the town, 
might there be clearly seen. The choice of locale was 
thus part of an attitude toward life. That attitude 
or view may be described fairly well as one of 
philosophic fatalism. 

It has not the cold removedness of the stoic: it 
has pit}^ in it, even love. But it is deeply sad, some- 
times bitter. In Hardy's presentation of Nature 
(a remark applying to some extent to a younger nov- 
elist who shows his influence, Phillpotts), she is dis- 
played as an ironic expression, with even malignant 
moods, of a supreme cosmic indifference to the 
petty fate of that animalcule, man. And this, in 
spite of a curious power she possesses of consoling 
him and of charming him by blandishments that cheat 
the loneliness of his soul. There is no purer example 
of tragedy in modern literature than Mr. Hardy's 
strongest, most mature stories. A mind deeply seri- 
ous and honest, interprets the human case in this 
wise and conceives that the underlying pitilessness 
can most graphically be conveyed in a setting like 
that of Egdon Heath, where the great silent forces 
of Nature somberly interblend with the forces set 
in motion by the human will, both futile to produce 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 267 

happiness. Even the attempt to be virtuous fails 
in " Jude " : as the attempt to be happy does in 
" Tess." That sardonic, final thought in the last- 
named book will not out of our ears : Fate had 
played its last little jest with poor Tess. 

But there are mitigations, many and welcome. 
Hardy has the most delightful humor. His peasants 
and simple middle-class folk are as distinctive and 
enjoyable as anything since Shakspere. He also 
has a more sophisticated, cutting humor — tipped with 
irony and tart to the taste — which he uses in those 
stories or scenes where urbanites mingle with his 
country folk. But his humorous triumphs are 
bucolic. And for another source of keenest pleasure, 
there is his style, ennobling all his work. Whether 
for the plastic manipulation of dialogue or the elo- 
quencies and exactitudes of description, he is em- 
phatically a master. His mind, pagan in its bent, 
is splendidly broad in its comprehension of 
the arcana of Nature and that of a poet sensitive 
to all the witchery of a world which at core is 
inscrutably dark and mysterious. He knows, none 
better, of the comfort to be got even from the sad 
when its beauty is made palpitating. No one before 
him, not Meredith himself, has so interfused Nature 
with man as to bring out the thought of man's 
ancient origin In the earth, his birth-ties, and her 
claims on his allegiance. This gives a rare savor 
to his handling of what with most novelists is often 



268 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

mere background. Egdon Heath was mentioned; 
the setting in " The Return of the Native " is not 
background in the usual sense; that mighty stretch 
of moorland is almost like the central actor of the 
drama, so potent is its influence upon the fate of the 
other characters. So with " The Woodlanders " and 
still other stories. Take away this subtle and vital 
relation of man to Nature, and the whole organism 
collapses. Environment with Hardy is atmosphere, 
influence, often fate itself. Being a scientist in the 
cast of his intellect, although by temperament a poet, 
he believes in environment as the shaping power con- 
ceived of by Taine and Zola. It is this use of 
Nature as a power upon people of deep, strong, 
simple character, showing the sweep of forces far 
more potent than the conventions of the polite world, 
which distinguishes Hardy's fiction. Fate with him 
being so largely that impersonal thing, environment; 
alhed with temperament (for which he is not re- 
sponsible), and with opportunity — another element 
of luck — it follows logically that man is the sport of 
the gods. Hardy is unable, like other determinists, 
to escape the dilemma of free-will versus predestina- 
tion, and that other crux, the imputation of person- 
ality to the workings of so-called natural laws. 
Indeed curiously, in his gigantic poem-cycle, " the 
Dynasts," the culmination of his life-work, he seems 
to hint at a plan of the universe which may be bene- 
ficial. 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 269 

To name another quality that gives distinction 
to Hardy's work : his fiction is notably well-built, and 
he is a resourceful technician. Often, the way he 
seizes a plot and gives it proportionate progress to 
an end that is inevitable, exhibits a well-nigh perfect 
art. Hardy's novels, for architectural excellence, 
are really wonderful and will richly repay careful 
study in this respect. It has been suggested that 
because his original profession was that of an arch- 
itect, his constructive ability may have been carried 
over to another craft. This may be fantastic ; but 
the fact remains that for the handling of material in 
such a manner as to eliminate the unnecessary, and 
move steadily toward the climax, while ever imitating 
though not reproducing, the unartificial gait of life. 
Hardy has no superior in English fiction and very 
few beyond it. These ameliorations of humor and 
pity, these virtues of style and architectural hand- 
ling make the reading of Thomas Hardy a literary 
experience, and very far from an undiluted course 
in Pessimism. A sane, vigorous, masculine mind is 
at work in all his fiction up to its very latest. Yet 
it were idle to deny the main trend of his teaching. 
It will be well to trace with some care the change 
which has crept gradually over his view of the world. 
As his development of thought is studied in the suc- 
cessive novels he produced between 1871 and 1898, 
it may appear that there is little fundamental change 
in outlook: the tragic note, and the dark theory of 



270 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

existence, explicit in " Tess " and " Jude," is more 
or less implicit in " Desperate Remedies." But 
change there is, to be found in the deepening of the 
feeling, the pushing of a theory to its logical ex- 
treme. This opening tale, read in the light of what 
he was to do, strikes one as un-Hardy-like in its 
rather complex plot, with its melodramatic tinge of 
incident. 

The second book, " Under the Greenwood Tree," 
is a blithe, bright woodland comedy and it would 
have been convenient for a cut-and-dried theory of 
Hardy's growth from lightness to gravity, had it 
come first. It is, rather, a happy interlude, hardly 
representative of his main interest, save for its clear- 
cut characterizations of country life and its idyllic 
flavor. The novel that trod on its heels, " A Pair 
of Blue Eyes," maugre its innocently Delia Cruscan 
title, — it sounds like a typical effort of " The 
Duchess," — has the tragic end which light-minded 
readers have come to dread in this author. He 
showed his hand thus comparatively early and hence- 
forth was to have the courage of his convictions in 
depicting human fate as he saw it — not as the reader 
wished it. 

In considering the books that subsequently ap- 
peared, to strengthen Hardy's place with those who 
know fine fiction, they are seen to have his genuine 
hall-mark, just in proportion as they are Wessex 
through and through: in the interplay of character 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 271 

and environment there, we get his deepest expres- 
sion as artist and interpreter. The really great 
novels are " Far From the Madding Crowd," " The 
Return of the Native," "The Mayor of Caster- 
bridge " and " Tess of the D'Urbervilles " : when he 
shifts the scene to London, as in " The Hand of 
Ethelberta " or introduces sophisticated types as in 
the dull " Laodicean," it means comparative failure. 
Mother soil (he is by birth a Dorchester man and 
lives there still) gives him idiosyncrasy, flavor, 
strength. That the best, most representative work 
of Hardy is to be seen in two novels of his middle 
career, " Far From the Madding Crowd " and " The 
Return of the Native " rather than in the later 
stories, " Tess " and " Jude," can be established, I 
think, purely on the ground of art, without dragging 
cheap charges of immorality into the discussion. 
In the last analysis, questions of art always become 
a question of ethics: the separation is arbitrary and 
unnatural. That " Tess " is the book into which the 
author has most intensely put his mature belief, may 
be true: it is quiveringly alive, vital as only that is 
which comes from the deeps of a man's being. But 
Hardy is so much a special pleader for Tess, that 
the argument suffers and a grave fault is apparent 
when the story's climax is studied. There is an 
intrusion of what seems like factitious melodrama 
instead of that tissue of events which one expects 
from a stem necessitarian. Tess need not be a mur- 



272 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

deress; therefore, the work should not so conclude, 
for this is an author whose merit is that his effects 
of character are causal. He is fatalistic, yes; but 
in general he royally disdains the cheap tricks of 
plot whereby excitment is furnished at the expense 
of credulity and verisimilitude. In Tess's end, there 
is a suspicion of sensation for its own sake — a sug- 
gestion of savage joy in shocking sensibilities. Of 
course, the result is most powerful; but the superior 
power of the novel is not here so much as in its 
splendid sympathy and truth. He has made this 
woman's life-history deeply affecting and is right in 
claiming that she is a pure soul, judged by intention. 
The heart feels that she is sinned against rather 
than sinning and in the spectacle of her fall finds 
food for thought " too deep for tears." At the same 
time, it should not be forgotten that Tess's piteous 
plight, — the fact that fate has proved too strong for 
a soul so high in its capacity for unselfish and noble 
love, — is based upon Hardy's assumption that she 
could not help it. Here, as elsewhere in his philoso- 
phy, you must accept his premise, or call Tess (whom 
you may still love) morally weak. It is this reserva- 
tion which will lead many to place the book, as a 
work of art, and notwithstanding its noble propor- 
tions and compelling power, below such a masterpiece 
as " The Return of the Native." That it is on the 
whole a sane and wholesome work, however, may be 
affirmed by one who finds Hardy's last novel " Jude 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 27S 

the Obscure " neither. For there is a profound dif- 
ference between two such creations. In the former, 
there is a piquant sense of the pathos and the awe- 
someness of life, but not of its unreHeved ughness 
and disgust; an impression which is received from 
the latter. Not only is " Jude " " a tragedy of un- 
fulfilled aim " as the author calls it ; so is " Tess " ; 
but it fills the reader with a kind of sullen rage 
to be an eye-witness of the foul and brutal: he is 
asked to see a drama develop beside a pig-sty. It is 
therefore, intensely unesthetic which, if true, is a 
word of condemnation for any work of art. It is 
deficient in poetry, in the broad sense; that, rather 
than frankness of treatment, is the trouble with it. 
And intellectually, it would seem to be the result 
of a bad quarter of an hour of the author : a megrim 
of the soul. Elements of greatness it has ; a fine 
motive, too ; to display the impossibilities for evolu- 
tion on the part of an aspiring soul hampered by 
circumstances and weak where most humanity is 
weak, in the exercise of sex-passion. A not dissimilar 
theme as it is worked out by Daudet in " Le Petite 
Chose " is beautiful in its pathos ; in " Jude " there 
is something shuddering about the arbitrary piling-up 
of horror; the modesty of nature is overstept; it 
is not a truly proportioned view of life, one feels; 
if life were really so bad as that, no one would be 
willing to live it, much less exhibit the cheerfulness 
which is characteristic of the majority of human 



274 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

beings. It is a fair guess that in the end it will be 
called the artistic mistake of a novelist of genius. 
Its harsh reception by critics in England and America 
was referred to by the author privately as an ex- 
ample of the " crass Philistinism " of criticism in 
those lands : Mr. Hardy felt that on the continent 
alone was the book understood, appreciated. I im- 
agine, however, that whatever the limitations of the 
Anglo-Saxon view, it comes close to the ultimate de- 
cision to be passed upon this work. 

One of the striking things about these Novels is 
the sense that they convey of the largeness of life. 
The action moves on a narrow stage set with the 
austere simplicity of the Elizabethans; the person- 
ages are extremely commonplace, the incidents in the 
main small and unexciting. Yet the tremendousness 
of human fate is constantly implied and brought 
home in the most impressive way. This is because 
all have spiritual value; if the survey be not wide, 
it sinks deep to the psychic center; and what matters 
vision that circles the globe, if it lacks grasp, pene- 
tration, uplift .'^ These, Hardy has. When one calls 
his peasants Shaksperian, one is trying to express 
the strength and savor, the rich earthy quality like 
fresh loam that pertains to these quaint figures, so 
evidently observed on the ground, and lovingly lifted 
over into literature. Their speech bewrays them and 
is an index of their slow, shrewd minds. 

Nor is his serious characterization less fine and 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 275 

representative than his humorous ; especially his 
women. It is puzzling to say whether Hardy's comic 
men, or his subtly drawn, sympathetically visualized 
women are to be named first in his praise: for power 
in both, and for the handling of nature, he will be 
long remembered. Bathsheba, Eustacia, Tess and 
the rest, they take hold on the very heart-strings and 
are known as we know our very own. It is not that 
they are good or bad, — generally they are both; it 
is that they are beautifully, terribly human. They 
mostly lack the pettiness that so often fatally limits 
their sex and quite as much, they lack the veneer 
that obscures the broad lines of character. And it 
is natural to add, Avhile thinking of Hardy's women, 
that, unlike almost all the Victorian novelists, he has 
insisted frankly, but in the main without offense, 
on woman's involvement with sex-passion; he finds 
that love, in a Wessex setting, has wider range than 
has been awarded it in previous study of sex rela- 
tions. And he has not hesitated to depict its rootage 
in the flesh; not overlooking its rise in the spirit to 
noblest heights. And it is this un-Anglo-Saxon-like 
comprehension of feminine humanity that makes him 
so fair to the sinning woman who trusts to her ruin 
or proves what is called weak because of the generous 
movement of her blood. No one can despise faithful- 
hearted Fannie Robin, dragging herself to the poor- 
house along Casterbridge highway ; that scene, which 
bites itself upon the memory, is fairly bathed in an 



276 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

immense, understanding pity. Although Hardy has 
thus used the freedom of France in treatment, he has, 
unhke so much of the Gallic realism, remained an 
idealist in never denying the soul of love while speak- 
ing more truthfully concerning its body than the 
fiction-makers before him. There is no finer handling 
of sex-love with due regard to its dual nature, — love 
that grows in earth yet flowers until it looks into 
heaven — than Marty's oft-quoted beautiful speech 
at her lover's grave; and Hardy's belief rings again 
in the defense of that good fellowship — that camera- 
derie — which can grow into " the only love which is 
as strong as death — beside which the passion usually 
so-called by the name is evanescent as steam." A 
glimpse like that of Hardy's mind separates him at 
once from Maupassant's view of the world. The 
traditions of English fiction, which he has insisted 
on disturbing, have, after all, been strong to direct 
his work, as they have that of all the writers born 
into the speech and nourished on its racial ideals. 
Another reason for giving the stories of the middle 
period, such as " The Return of the Native," prefer- 
ence over those that are later, lies in the fact that 
the former have no definite, aggressive theme ; whereas 
" Tess " announces an intention on the title page, 
" Jude," in a foreword. Whatever view of life may 
be expressed in " The Mayor of Casterbridge," for 
example, is imbedded, as it should be, in the course 
of the story. This tendency towards didacticism 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 277 

is a common thing in the cases of modern writers 
of fiction ; it spoiled a great novelist in the case of 
Tolstoy, with compensatory gains in another direc- 
tion ; of those of English stock, one thinks of Eliot, 
Howells, Mrs. Ward and many another. But how- 
ever natural this may be in an age like ours, the art 
of the literary product is, as a rule, injured by the 
habit of using fiction as a jumping-board for theory. 
In some instances, dullness has resulted. Eliot has 
not escaped scot-free. With Hardy, he is, to my 
taste, never dull. Repellent as " Jude " may be, it 
is never that. But a hardness of manner and an 
unpleasant bias are more than likely to follow this 
aim, to the fiction's detriment. 

It is a great temptation to deflect from the pur- 
pose of this work in order to discuss Hardy's short 
stories, for a master in this kind he is. A sketch like 
" The Three Strangers " is as truly a masterpiece as 
Stevenson's " A Lodging for The Night." It must 
suffice to say of his work in the tale that it enables 
the author to give further assurance of his power of 
atmospheric handling, his stippling in of a character 
by a few strokes, his skill in dramatic scene, his 
knowledge of Wessex types, and especially, his sub- 
dued but permeating pessimism. There is nothing 
in his writings more quietly, deeply hopeless than 
most of the tales in the collection " Life's Little 
Ironies." One shrinks away from the truth and 
terror of them while lured by their charm. The short 



278 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

stories increase one's admiration for the artist, but 
the full, more virile message comes from the Novels. 
It is matter for regret that " Jude the Obscure," 
unless the signs fail, is to be his last testament in 
fiction. For such a man to cease from fiction at 
scarce sixty can but be deplored. The remark takes 
on added pertinency because the novelist has essayed 
in lieu of fiction the poetic drama, a form in which 
he has less ease and authority. 

Coming when he did and feeling in its full measure 
the tidal wave from France, Hardy was compelled 
both by inward and outward pressure to see life un- 
romantically, so far as the human fate is concerned: 
but always a poet at heart (he began with verse), 
he found a vent for that side of his being in Nature, 
in great cosmic realities, in the stormy, passionate 
heart of humanity, so infinite in its aspirations, so 
doughty in its heroisms, so pathetic in its doom. 
There is something noble always in the tragic large- 
ness of Hardy's best fiction. His grim determinism 
is softened by lyric airs ; and even when man is most 
lonesome, he is consoled by contact with " the pure, 
eternal course of things " ; whose august flow com- 
forts Arnold. Because of his art, the representative 
character of his thought, reflecting in prose, as does 
Matthew Arnold in verse, the deeper thought-currents 
of the time; and because too of the personal quality 
which for lack of a better word one still must call 
genius, Thomas Hardy is sure to hold his place in 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 279 

the English fiction of the closing years of the nine- 
teenth century and is to-day the most distinguished 
living novelist using that speech and one of the few 
to be recognized and honored abroad. No writer of 
fiction between 1875 and 1900 has more definitely 
had a strong influence upon the English Novel as to 
content, scope and choice of subject. If his convic- 
tions have led him to excess, they will be forgiven and 
forgotten in the light of the serene mastery shed by 
the half dozen great works he has contributed to 
English literature. 

II 

Once in a while — a century or so, maybe, — comes 
an artist who refuses to be classified. Rules fail to 
explain him: he makes new rules in the end. He 
seems too big for any formula. He impresses by 
the might of his personality, teaching the world what 
it should have known before, that the personal is the 
life-blood of all and any art. Some such effect is 
made upon the critic by George Meredith, who so 
recently has closed his eyes to the shows of earth. 
One can find in him almost all the tendencies of Eng- 
lish fiction. He is realist and romanticist, frank 
lover of the flesh, lofty idealist, impressionist and 
judge, philosopher, dramatist, essayist, master of the 
comic and above all. Poet. Eloquence, finesse, 
strength and sweetness, the limpid and the cryptic, 
are his in turn : he puts on when he will, like a defen- 



280 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

sive armor, a style to frighten all but the elect. And 
they who persist and discover the secret, swear that 
it is more than worth the pains. Perhaps the lesson 
of it all is that a first-class writer, creative and dis- 
tinctive, is a phenomenon transcending school, move- 
ment or period. George Meredith is not, if we 
weigh words, the greatest English novelist to-day — 
for both Hardy and Stevenson are his superiors as 
artists: but he is the greatest man who has written 
fiction. 

Although he was alive but yesterday, the novel 
frequently awarded first position among his works, 
" The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," was published a 
good half century ago. Go back to it, get its mean- 
ing, then read the latest fiction he wrote — (he ceased 
to produce fiction more than a decade before his 
death) and you appear to be in contact with the 
same personality in the substantial of story-making 
and of life-view. The only notable change is to be 
found in the final group of three stories, " One of 
Our Conquerors," " Lord Ormont and His Aminta " 
and " The Amazing Marriage." The note of social 
protest is louder here, the revolt against conven- 
tions more pronounced. Otherwise, the author of 
" Feverel " is the author of " The Amazing Mar- 
riage." Much has occurred in the Novel during the 
forty years between the two works: realism has trav- 
eled to an extreme, neo-idealism come by way of re- 
action, romanticism bloomed again, the Novel of in- 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 281 

genious construction, the Novel of humanitarian 
meaning, the Novel of thesis and problem and the 
Novel that foretells the future like an astrologer, all 
these types and yet others have been practised; but 
Meredith has kept tranquilly on the tenor of his large 
way, uninfluenced, except as he has expressed all 
these complexities in his own work. He is in literary 
evolution, a sport. Critics who have tried to show 
how his predecessors and contemporaries have in- 
fluenced him, have come out lamely from the attempt. 
He has been sensitive not to individual writers, but 
to that imponderable yet potent thing, the time-ten- 
dency in literature. He throws back to much in the 
past, while in the van of modern thought. What, to 
illustrate, could be more of the present intellectually 
than his remarkable sonnet-sequence, " Modern 
Love".? And are not his women, as a type, the 
noblest example of the New Woman of our day — 
socially, economically, intellectually emancipated, 
without losing their distinctive feminine quality? 
And yet, in " The Shaving of Shagpat," an early 
work, we go back to the Arabian Nights for a model. 
The satiric romance, " Harry Richmond," often re- 
minds of the leisured episode method of the eighteenth 
century ; and while reading the unique " Evan Har- 
rington " we think at times of Aristophanes. 

Nor is much light thrown on Meredith's path in 
turning to his personal history. Little is known of 
this author's ancestry and education; his environ- 



282 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

merit has been so simple, his life in its exteriors so 
uneventful, that we return to the work itself with 
the feeling that the kej to the secret room must be 
here if anywhere. It is known that he was educated 
in youth in Germany, which is interesting in reference 
to the problem of his style. And there is more to be 
said concerning his parentage than the smug pro- 
priety of print has revealed while he lived. We 
know, too, that his marriage with the daughter of 
Thomas Love Peacock proved unhappy, and that for 
many years he has resided, almost a recluse, with his 
daughter, in the idyllic retirement of Surrey. The 
privacy of Boxhill has been respected; next to never 
has Meredith spoken in any public way and seldom 
visited London. When he was, at Tennyson's death, 
made the President of the British Society of Authors, 
the honor sought the man. The rest is silence ; 
what has appeared since his death has been of too 
conflicting a nature for credence. We await a trust- 
worthy biography. 

The appeal then must be to the books themselves. 
Exclusive of short story, sketch and tale, they in- 
clude a dozen novels of generous girth — for Meredith 
is old-fashioned in his demand for elbow-room. 
They are preeminently novels of character and more 
than any novelist of the day the view of the world 
embodied in them is that of the intellect. This does 
not mean that they are wanting in emotional force 
or interest : merely, that in George Meredith's fiction 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 283 

men and women live the life of thought as it is acted 
upon by practical issues. Character seen in action is 
always his prepossession ; plot is naught save as it 
exhibits this. The souls of men and women are his 
quarry, and the test of a civilization the degree in 
which it has developed the mind for an enlightened 
control over the emotions and the bodily appetites. 
Neither does this mean, as with Henry James, the 
disappearance of plot: a healthy objectivity of narra- 
tive framework is preserved; if anything the earlier 
books — " Feverel," " Evan Harrington," " Rhoda 
Fleming " and the duo " Sandra Belloni " and " Vit- 
toria " — have more of story interest than the later 
novels. Meredith has never feared the use of the 
episode, in this suggesting the older methods of 
Fielding and Smollett. Yet the episodic in his hands 
has ever its use for psychologic envisagement. 
Love, too, plays a large role in his fiction ; indeed, 
in the wider platonic sense, it is constantly present, 
although he is the last man to be called a writer of 
love-stories. And no man has permitted himself 
greater freedom in stepping outside the story in 
order to explain his meaning, comment upon char- 
acter and scene, rhapsodize upon Life, or directly 
harangue the reader. And this broad marginal 
reservation of space, however much it is deplored in 
viewing his work as novel-making, adds a peculiar 
tonic and is a characteristic we could ill spare. It 
brings us back to the feeling that he is a great man 



284 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

using the fiction form for purposes broader than 
that of telling a story. 

Because of this ample personal testimony in his 
books it should be easy to state his Lebensanschauung, 
unless the opacity of his manner blocks the way or 
he indulges in self-contradiction in the manner of a 
Nietzsche. Such is not the case. What is the 
philosophy unfolded in his representative books? 

It will be convenient to choose a few of those 
typical for illustration. The essence of Meredith is 
to be discovered in such works as " The Ordeal of 
Richard Feverel," " Evan Harrington," " Harry 
Richmond," "The Egoist," "Diana of the Cross- 
ways." If you know these, you understand him. 
" Lord Ormont and his Aminta " might well be added 
because of its teaching; but the others will sei-^^e, 
with the understanding that so many-sided a writer 
has in other works given further noble proof of his 
powers. If I allowed personal preference to be my 
sole guide, " Rhoda Fleming " would be prominent 
in the list ; and many place " Beauchamp's Career " 
high, if not first among his works ; — a novel teeming 
with his views, particularly valuable for its treatment 
of English politics and certainly containing some of 
his most striking characterization, in particular, one 
of his noblest women. Still, those named will fairly 
reflect the novelist and speak for all. 

" Richard Feverel," which had been preceded by a 
book of poems, the fantasia " The Shaving of Shag- 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 285 

pat " and an historical novelette " Farina,'^ was the 
first book that announced the arrival of a great nov- 
elist. It is at once a romance of the modern type, 
a love-story and a problem book; the tri-statement 
makes it Meredithian. It deals with the tragic union 
of Richard and Lucy, in a setting that shifts from 
sheer idyllic, through worldly and realistic to a 
culmination of dramatic grief. It contains, in 
measure heaped up and running over, the poetry, the 
comedy and the philosophy, the sense of Life's riddle, 
for which the author is renowned. But its intellec- 
tual appeal of theme — aside from the incidental wis- 
dom that stars its pages — is found in the study of 
the problem of education. Richard's father would 
shape his c^ji^er according to a preconceived idea 
based on parental love and guided by an anxious, 
fussy consulting of the oracles. The attempt to 
stretch the son upon a pedagogic procustean bed 
fails disastrously, wrecking his own happiness and 
that of his sweet girl-wife. Love is stronger than 
aught else and we are offered the spectacle of ruined 
lives hovered over by the best intentions. The novel 
is an illustration of the author's general teaching that 
a human being must have reasonable liberty of action 
for self-development. The heart must be allowed 
fair-play, though its guidance by the intellect is de- 
sirable. 

It has been objected that this moving romance 
ends in unnecessary tragedy; that the catastrophe 



286 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

is not inevitable. But it may be doubted if the 
mistake of Sir Austin Feverel could be so clearly in- 
dicated had not the chance bullet through a window 
killed the young wife when reconciliation with her 
husband appeared probable. But a book so vital 
in spirit, with such lyric interludes, lofty heights 
of wisdom, homeric humor, dramatic moments and 
profound emotions, can well afford lapses from per- 
fect form, awkwardnesses of art. There are places 
where philosophy checks movement or manner ob- 
scures thought ; but one overlooks all such, remember- 
ing Richard and Lucy meeting by the river; Rich- 
ard's lonesome night walk when he learns he is a 
father; the marvelous parting from Bella Blount; 
father and son confronted with Richard's separation 
from the girl-wife ; the final piteous passing of Lucy. 
These are among the great moments of English 
fiction. 

One gets a sense of Meredith's resources of breadth 
and variety next in taking up " Evan Harrington." 
Here is a satiric character sketch where before was 
romance ; for broad comedy in the older and larger 
sense it has no peer among modem novels. The 
purpose is plain: to show the evolution of a young 
middle-class Englishman, a tailor's son, through 
worldly experience with polite society into true 
democracy. After the disillusionment of " high life," 
after much yeasty juvenile foolishness and false 
ideals, Evan comes back to his father's shop with 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 287 

his lesson learned: it is possible (in modern England) 
to be both tailor and gentleman. 

In placing this picture before the spectator, an 
incomparable view of genteel society with contrasted 
touches of low life is offered. For pure comedy that 
is of the midriff as well as of the brain, the inn scene 
with the astonishing Raikes as central figure is un- 
surpassed in all Meredith, and only Dickens has done 
the like. And to correspond in the fashionable world, 
there is Harrington's sister, the Countess de Saldar, 
who is only second to Becky Sharp for saliency and 
delight. Some find these comic figures overdrawn, 
even impossible ; but they stand the test applied to 
Dickens: they abide in affectionate memory, vivid 
evocations made for our lasting joy. As with 
"Feverel," the book is a piece of life first, a lesson 
second; but the underlying thesis is present, not to 
the injury of one who reads for story's sake. 

An extraordinary further example of resourceful- 
ness, with a complete change of key, is " The Ad- 
ventures of Harry Richmond." The ostensible busi- 
ness of the book is to depict the growth from boyhood 
to manhood and through sundry experiences of love, 
with the resulting effect upon his character, of the 
young man whose name gives it title. It may be 
noted that a favorite task with Meredith is this, to 
trace the development of a personality from imma- 
turity to a maturity gained by the hard knocks of the 
master-educator. Love. But the figure really dom- 



288 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

inant is not Harry nor any one of his sweethearts, 
but that of his father, Roy Richmond. I must be- 
lieve that English fiction offers nothing more original 
than he. He is an indescribable compound of bril- 
liant swashbuckler, splendid gentleman and winning 
Goodheart. Barry Lyndon, Tarascon, Don Quixote 
and Septimus go into his making — and yet he is 
not explained; — an absolute original. The scene 
where, in a German park on an occasion of great 
pomp, he impersonates the statue of a Prince, is one 
of the author's triumphs — never less delightful at a 
re-reading. 

But has this amazing creation a meaning, or is 
Roy merely one of the results of the sportive play 
of a man of genius .^^ He is something more, we feel, 
when, at the end of the romance, he gives his life for 
the woman who has so faithfully loved him and be- 
lieved in his royal pretensions. He perishes in a fire, 
because in saving her he would not save himself. It 
is as if the author said : " Behold, a man by nature 
histrionic and Bohemian, and do not make the mis- 
take to think him incapable of nobility. Romantic 
in his faults, so too he is romantic in his virtues." 
And back of this kindly treatment of the lovable 
rascal (who was so ideal a father to the little Rich- 
mond!) does there not lurk the thought that the 
pseudo-romantic attitude toward Life is full of dan- 
ger — ^in truth, out of the question in modern society.? 

" The Egoist " has long been a test volume with 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 289 

Meredithians. If you like it you are of the cult ; if 
not, merely an amateur. It is inevitable to quote 
Stevenson who, when he had read it several times, 
declared that at the sixth reading he would begin to 
realize its greatness. Stevenson was a doughty 
admirer of Meredith, finding the elder " the only 
man of genius of my acquaintance," and regarding 
" Rhoda Fleming " as a book to send one back to 
Shakspere. 

That " The Egoist " is typical — ^in a sense, most 
typical of the fictions, — is very true. That, on the 
other hand, it is Meredith's best novel may be boldly 
denied, since it is hardly a novel at all. It is a wonder- 
ful analytic study of the core of self that is in human- 
ity. Willoughby, incarnation of a self-centeredness 
glossed over to others and to himself by fine gentle- 
man manners and instincts, is revealed stroke after 
stroke until, in the supreme test of his alliance with 
Clara Middleton, he is flayed alive for the reader's 
benefit. In this power of exposure, by the subtlest, 
most unrelenting analysis, of the very penetralia 
of the human soul it has no counterpart ; beside it, 
most of the psychology of fiction seems child's play. 
And the truth of it is overwhelming. No wonder 
Stevenson speaks of its " serviceable exposure of 
myself." Every honest man who reads it, winces 
at its infallible touching of a moral sore-spot. The 
inescapable ego in us all was never before portrayed 
by such a master. 



290 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

But because it is a study that lacks the breadth, 
variety, movement and objectivity of the Novel 
proper, " The Egoist " is for the confirmed Meredith 
lover, not for the beginner: to take it first is per- 
chance to go no further. Readers have been lost to 
him by this course. The immense gain in depth and 
delicacy acquired by English fiction since Richardson 
is well illustrated b}^ a comparison of the latter's 
"Sir Charles Grandison " with Meredith's "The 
Egoist." One is a portrait for the time, the other 
for all time. Both, superficially viewed, are the same 
type : a male paragon before whom a bevy of women 
burn incense. But O the difference! Grandison is 
serious to his author, while Meredith, in skinning 
Willoughby alive like another Marsyas, is once and 
for all making the worship of the ego hateful. 

It is interesting that " Diana of the Crossways " 
was the book first to attract American readers. It 
has some of the author's eccentricities at their worst. 
But it was in one respect an excellent choice: the 
heroine is thoroughly representative of the author 
and of the age ; possibly this country is sympathetic 
to her for the reason that she seems indigenous. 
Diana furnishes a text for a dissertation on Mere- 
dith's limning of the sex, and of his conception of 
the mental relation of the sexes. She is a modern 
woman, not so much that she is superior in good- 
ness to the ideal of woman established in the mid- 
Victorian period by Thackeray and Dickens, as that 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 29I 

she is bigger and broader. She is the result of the 
process of social readjustment. Her story is that 
of a woman soul experiencing a succession of unions 
and through them learning the higher love. First, 
the manage de convenance of an unawakened girl; 
then, a marriage wherein admiration, ambition and 
flattered pride play their parts ; finally, the marriage 
with Redbourne, a union based on tried friendship, 
comradeship, respect, warming into passion that, like 
the sudden up-leap of flame on the altar, lifts the 
spirit onto ideal heights. Diana is an imperfect, 
sinning, aspiring, splendid creature. And in the 
narrative that surrounds her, we get Meredith's 
theory of the place of intellect in woman, and in the 
development of society. He has an intense convic- 
tion that the human mind should be so trained that 
woman can never fall back upon so-called instinct ; he 
ruthlessly attacks her " intuition," so often lauded 
and made to cover a multitude of sins. When he 
remarks that she will be the last thing to be civilized 
by man, the satire is directed against man rather 
than against woman herself, since it is man who 
desires to keep her a creature of the so-called intui- 
tions. A mighty champion of the sex, he never tires 
telling it that intellectual training is the sure way to 
all the equalities. This conviction makes him a stal- 
wart enemy of sentimentalism, which is so fiercely 
satirized in " Sandra Belloni " in the persons of the 
Pole family. His works abound in passages in which 



292 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

this view is displayed, flashed before the reader in 
diamond-like epigram and aphorism. Not that he 
despises the emotions: those who know him thor- 
oughly will recognize the absurdity of such a charge. 
Only he insists that they be regulated and used aright 
by the master, brain. The mishaps of his women come 
usually from the haphazard abeyance of feeling or 
from an unthinking bowing down to the arbitrary 
dictations of society. Tliis insistence upon the appli- 
cation of reason (the reasoning process dictated by 
an age of science) to social situations, has led this 
writer to advise the setting aside of the marriage 
bond in certain circumstances. In both " Lord 
Ormont and his Aminta " and " One of our Con- 
querors " he advocates a greater freedom in this 
relation, to anticipate what time may bring to pass. 
It is enough here to say that this extreme view does 
not represent Meredith's best fiction nor his most 
fruitful period of production. 

Perhaps the most original thing about Meredith 
as a novelist is the daring way in which he has made 
an alliance between romance and the intellect which 
was supposed, in an older conception, to be its arch- 
enemy. He gives to Romance, that creature of the 
emotions, the corrective and tonic of the intellect. 
" To preserve Romance," he declares, " we must be 
inside the heads of our people as well as the hearts 
. . . in days of a growing activity of the head." 

Let us say once again that Romance means a cer- 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 29S 

tain use of material as the result of an attitude 
toward Life; this attitude may be temporary, a 
mood ; or steady, a conviction. It is the latter with 
George Meredith; and be it understood, his material 
is always realistic, it is his interpretation that is 
superbly idealistic. The occasional crabbedness of 
his manner and his fiery admiration for Italy are 
not the only points in which he reminds one of Brown- 
ing. He is one with him in his belief in soul, his 
conception of life is an arena for its trying-out; 
one with him also in the robust acceptance of earth 
and earth's worth, evil and all, for enjoyment and as 
salutary experience. This is no fanciful parallel 
between Meredith and a man who has been called 
(with their peculiarities of style in mind) the Mere- 
dith of Poetry, as Meredith has been called the 
Browning of Prose. 

Thus, back of whatever may be the external story 
— ^the Italian struggle for unity in " Vittoria," Eng- 
lish radicalism in " Beauchamp's Career," a seduction 
melodrama in " Rhoda Fleming " — there is always 
with Meredith a steady interpretation of life, a prin- 
ciple of belief. It is his crowning distinction that he 
can make an intellectual appeal quite aside from the 
particular story he is telling; — and it is also appar- 
ent that this is his most vulnerable point as novelist. 
We get more from him just because he shoots beyond 
the fiction target. He is that rare thing in English 
novel-making, a notable thinker. Of all nineteenth 



294 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

century novelists he leads for intellectual stimula- 
tion. With fifty faults of manner and matter, irri- 
tating, even outrageous in his eccentricities, he can 
at his best startle with a brilliance that is alone of 
its kind. It is because we hail him as philosopher, 
wit and poet that he fails comparatively as artist. 
He shows throughout his work a sublime carelessness 
of workmanship on the structural side of his craft; 
but in those essentials, dialogue, character and scene, 
he rises to the peaks of his profession. 

Probably more readers are offended by his manner- 
isms of style than by any other defect; and they 
are undeniable. The opening chapter of " Diana " 
is a hard thing to get by; the same may be said of 
the similar chapter in " Beauchamp's Career." In 
" One of our Conquerors," early and late, the manner 
is such as to lose for him even tried adherents. Is 
the trouble one of thought or expression .f* And is it 
honest or an affectation.? Meredith in some books — 
and in all books more or less — adopts a strangely in- 
direct, over-elaborated, far-fetched and fantastic style, 
which those who love him are fain to deplore. The 
author's learning gets in his way and leads him into 
recondite allusions ; besides this, he has that quality 
of mind which is stimulated into finding analogies 
on every side, so that image is piled on image and 
side-paths of thought open up in the heat of this 
mental activity. Part of the difficulty arises from 
surplusage of imagination. Sometimes it is used 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 295 

in the service of comment (often satirical) ; again in 
a kind of Greek chorus to the drama, greatly to its 
injury ; or in pure description, where it is hardly less 
offensive. Thus in " The Egoist " we read : " Wil- 
loughby shadowed a deep droop on the bend of his 
neck before Clara," and reflection shows that all this 
absurdly acrobatic phrase means is that the hero 
bowed to the lady. An utterly simple occurrence 
and thus described! It is all the more strange and 
aggravating in that it comes from a man who on 
hundreds of occasions writes English as pungent, 
sonorous and sweet as any writer in the history of 
the native literature. This is true both of dialogue 
and narrative. He is the most quotable of authors ; 
his Pilgrim's Scrip is stuff'ed full of precious sayings, 
expressing many moods of emotion and interpreting 
the world under its varied aspects of romance, beauty, 
wit and drama. " Strength is the brute form of 
truth." There is a French conciseness in such a 
sentence and immense mental suggestiveness. Both 
his scenic and character phrasing are memorable, as 
where the dyspeptic philosopher in " Feverel " is de- 
scribed after dinner as " languidly twinkling sto- 
machic contentment." And what a scene is that where 
Master Gammon replies to Mrs. Sumfit's anxious 
query concerning his lingering at table with appetite 
apparently unappeasable : 

" ' When do you think you will have done, Master 
Gammon ? ' 



296 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

" ' When I feels my buttons, Ma'am.' " 

Or hear John Thrasher in " Harry Richmond " 
dilate on Language: 

" ' There's cockney, and there's country, and 
there's school. Mix the three, strain and throw away 
the sediment. Now yon's my view.' " 

Has any philologist said all that could be said, 
so succinctly? His lyric outbursts in the face of 
Nature or better yet, where as in the moonlight 
meeting of the lovers at Wilming Weir in " Sandra 
Belloni," nature is interspersed with human passion 
in a glorious union of music, picture and impassioned 
sentiment, — these await the pleasure of the enthralled 
seeker in every book. To encounter such passages 
(perhaps in a mood of protest over some almost 
insufferable defect) is to find the reward rich indeed. 

Let the cause of obscurity be what it may, we need 
not doubt that with Meredith style is the man, a 
perfectly honest way of expressing his personality. 
It is not impossible that his unconventional education 
and the early influence of German upon him, may 
come into the consideration. But in the main his 
peculiarity is congenital. 

Meredith lacked self-criticism as a writer. But 
it is quite inaccurate to speak of obscure thought: 
it is language, the medium, which makes the trouble 
when there is any. His thought, allowing for the 
fantasticality of his humor in certain moods, is never 
muddled or unorganized: it is sane, consistent and 



HARDY AND MEREDITH 297 

worthy of attention. To say this, is still to regret 
the stylistic vagaries. 

One other defect must be mentioned : the characters 
talk like Meredith, instead of in their own persons. 
This is not true uniformly, of course, but it does mar 
the truth of his presentation. Young girls show wit 
and wisdom quite out of keeping ; those in humble life 
— a bargeman, perhaps, or a prize-fighter — speak 
as they would not in reality. Illusion is by so much 
disturbed. It would appear in such cases that the 
thinker temporarily dominated the creative artist. 

When all is said, pro and con, there remains a 
towering personality; a writer of unique quality; a 
man so stimulating and surprising as he is, that we 
almost prefer him to the perfect artist he never could 
be. No English maker of novels can give us a fuller 
sense of life, a keener realization of the dignity of 
man. It is natural to wish for more than we have — 
to desire that Meredith had possessed the power 
of complete control of his material and himself, had 
revised his work to better advantage. But perhaps 
it is more commonsensible to be thankful for him as 
he is. 

As to influence, it would seem modest to assert 
that Meredith is as bracingly wholesome morally as 
he is intellectually stimulating. In a private letter to 
a friend who was praising his finest book, he whim- 
sically mourns the fact that he must write for a 
living and hence feel like disowning so many of his 



298 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

children when in cold blood he scrutinizes his off- 
spring. The letter in its entirety (it is unpublished) 
is proof, were any needed, that he had a high artistic 
ideal which kept him nobly dissatisfied with his en- 
deavor. There is in him neither pose nor com- 
placent self-satisfaction. To an American, whom 
he was bidding good-by at his own gate, he said: 
" If I had my books to do over agaiji, I should try 
harder to make sure their influence was good." His 
aims, ethical and artistic, throughout his work, can 
be relied upon as high and noble. His faults are as 
honest as he himself, the inherent defects of his genius. 
No writer of our day stands more sturdily for the 
idea that, whereas art is precious, personality is more 
precious still; without which art is a tinkling cymbal 
and with which even a defective art can conquer 
Time, like a garment not all-seemly, that yet cannot 
hide an heroic figure. 



CHAPTER XIII 

STEVENSON 

It is too early yet to be sure that Robert Louis 
Stevenson will make a more cogent appeal for 
a place in English letters as a writer of fiction than 
as an essayist. But had he never written essays 
likely to rank him with the few masters of that 
delightful fireside form, he would still have an in- 
disputable claim as novelist. The claim in fact is 
a double one ; it is founded, first, on his art and power 
as a maker of romance, but also upon his historical 
service to English fiction, as the man most instru- 
mental in purifjnng the muddy current of realism 
in the late nineteenth centurj'- by a wholesome in- 
fusion, — the romantic view of life. It is already 
easier to estimate his importance and get the sig- 
nificance of his work than it was when he died in 
1894 — stricken down on the piazza of his house at 
Vailima, a Scotchman doomed to fall in a far-away, 
alien place. 

We are better able now to separate that personal 
charm felt from direct contact with the man, which 
almost hypnotized those who knew him, from the 
more abiding charm which is in his writings : the 

299 



300 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

revelation of a character the most attractive of his 
generation. Rarely, if ever before, have the qualities 
of artistry and fraternal fellowship been united in 
a man of letters to such a degree; most often they 
are found apart, the gods choosing to award their 
favors less lavishly. 

Because of this union of art and life, Stevenson's 
romances killed two birds with one stone; boys loved 
his adventuresomeness, the wholesome sensationalism 
of his stories with something doing on every page, 
while amateurs of art responded to his felicity of 
phrase, his finished technique, the exhibition of crafts- 
manship conquering difficulty and danger. Artist, 
lover of life, insistent truth-teller, Calvinist, Bohe- 
mian, believer in joy, all these cohabit in his books. 
In early masterpieces like " Treasure Island " and 
" The Wrecker " it is the lover of life who conducts 
us, telling the story for story's sake: 

" My mistress still the open road 
And the bright eyes of danger/' 

Such is the goddess that beckons on. The creed 
implicit in such work deems that life is stirring and 
worth while, and that it is a weakness to repine and 
waste time, to be too subjective when so much on 
earth is objectively alluring. This is only a part of 
Stevenson, of course, but it was that phase of him 
vastly liked of the public and doubtless doing most 
to give him vogue. 



STEVENSON 301 

But in later work like " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde " 
we get quite another thing: the skilled story-maker 
is still giving us thrilling fiction, to be sure, but here 
it is the Scotchman of acute conscience, writing a 
spiritual allegory with the healthy instinct which 
insists that the lesson shall be dramatized. So, too, 
in a late fiction like " Ebb Tide," apparently as 
picaresque and harum-scarum as " Treasure Island," 
it is nevertheless the moralist who is at work beneath 
the brilliantly picturesque surface of the narrative, 
contrasting types subtly, showing the gradings in 
moral disintegration. In the past-mastership of the 
finest Scotch novels, " Kidnapped " and its sequel 
"David Balfour," "The Master oif Ballantrae " 
and the beautiful torso, " Weir of Hermiston," we 
get the psychologic romance, which means a shift 
of interest ; — character comes first, story is secondary 
to it. Here is the maturest Stevenson, the fiction 
most expressive of his genius, and naturally the in- 
spiration is native, he looks back, as he so often did 
in his poetry, to the distant gray little island which 
was Motherland to him, home of his youth and of 
his kindred, the earth where he was fain to lie when 
his time came. Stevenson, to the end, could always 
return to sheer story, as in " St. Ives," but in doing 
so, is a little below his best: that kind did not call 
on his complete powers: in such fiction deep did not 
answer unto deep. 

In 1883, when " Treasure Island " appeared, the 



302 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

public was gasping for the oxygen that a story with 
outdoor movement and action could supply: there 
was enough and to spare of invertebrate subtleties, 
strained metaphysics and coarse naturalistic studies. 
A sublimated dime novel like " Treasure Island " 
came at the psychologic moment; the year before 
" The New Arabian Nights " had offered the same 
sort of pabulum, but had been practically overlooked. 
Readers were only too glad to turn from people with 
a past to people of the past, or to people of the 
present whose ways were ways of pleasantness. Ste- 
venson substituted a lively, normal interest in life 
for plotlessness and a surfeit of the flesh. The public 
rose to the bait as the trout to a particularly invit- 
ing fly. Once more reverting to the good old appeal 
of Scott — incident, action and derring-do^ — he added 
the attraction of his personal touch, and what was so 
gallantly proferred was greedily grasped. 

Although, as has been said, Stevenson passed from 
the primitive romance of the Shilling Shocker to 
the romance of character, his interest in character 
study was keen from the first: the most plot-cunning 
and external of his yarns have that illuminative ex- 
posure of human beings — in flashes at least — which 
mark him off from the bluff, robust manner of a 
Dumas and lend an attraction far greater than that 
of mere tangle of events. This gets fullest ex- 
pression in the Scotch romances. 

" The Master of Ballantrae," for one illustration ; 



STEVENSON 303 

the interplay of motive and act as it affects a group 
of human beings is so conducted that plot becomes 
a mere framework, within which we are permitted to 
see a typical tragedy of kinship. This receives 
curious corroboration in the fact that when, towards 
the close of the story, the scene shifts to America 
and the main motive — the unfolding of the fraternal 
fortunes of the tragic brothers, is made minor to a 
series of gruesome adventures (however entertaining 
and well done) the reader, even if uncritical, has 
an uneasy sense of disharmony: and rightly, since 
the strict character romance has changed to the 
romance of action. 

It has been stated that the finer qualities of Ste- 
venson are called out by the psychological romance 
on native soil. He did some brilliant and engaging 
work of foreign setting and motive. " The Island 
Nights' Entertainments " is as good in its way as 
the earlier " New Arabian Nights " — far superior to 
it, indeed, for finesse and the deft command of ex- 
otic material. Judged as art, " The Bottle Imp " 
and " The Beach of Falesa " are among the triumphs 
of ethnic interpretation, let alone their more external 
charms of story. And another masterpiece of for- 
eign setting, " A Lodging for The Night," is further 
proof of Stevenson's ability to use other than Scotch 
motives for the materials of his art. " Ebb-Tide," 
again, grim as it is, must always be singled out as 
a marvel of tone and proportion, yet seems bom 



304 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

out of an existence utterly removed as to conditions 
and incentives from the land of his birth. But when, 
in liis own words: 

" The tropics vanish, and meseems that I, 
From Halkerside, from topmost AUermuir, 
Or steep Caerketton, dreaming gaze again." 

then, as if vitalized by mother-earth, Stevenson shows 
a breadth, a vigor, a racy idiosyncrasy, that best 
justify a comparison with Scott. It means a quality 
that is easier felt than expressed; of the very warp 
and woof of his work. If the elder novelist 
seems greater in scope, spontaneity and substance, 
the younger surpasses him in the elegancies and 
niceties of his art. And it is only a just recognition 
of the difference of Time as well as of personality 
to say that the psychology of Stevenson is far 
more profound and searching. Nor may it be denied 
that Sir Walter nods, that there are flat, uninter- 
esting stretches in his heroic panorama, while of 
Stevenson at the worst, we may confidently assert 
that he is never tedious. He fails in the comparison 
if anywhere in largeness of personality, not in the 
perfectness of the art of his fiction. In the technical 
demands of his profession he is never wanting. He 
always has a story to tell, tells it with the skill 
which means constructive development and a sense 
of situation; he creates characters who live, interest 
and do not easily fade from memory: he has ex- 
ceptional power in so filling in backgrounds as to 



STEVENSON 305 

produce the illusion of atmosphere; and finally, he 
has, whether in dialogue or description, a wonder- 
fully supple instrument of expression. If the style 
of his essays is at times mannered, the charge can 
not be made against his representative fiction: 
" Prince Otto " stands alone in this respect, and 
that captivating, comparatively early romance, con- 
fessedly written under the influence of Meredith, is 
a delicious literary experiment rather than a deeply- 
felt piece of life. Perhaps the central gift of all 
is that for character^is it, in truth, not the central 
gift for any weaver of fiction? So we thought in 
studying Dickens. Stevenson's creations wear the 
habit of life, yet with more than life's grace of 
carriage; they are seen picturesquely without, but 
also psychologically within. In a marvelous por- 
trayal like that of John Silver in " Treasure Island " 
the result is a composite of what we see and what 
we shudderingly guess: eye and mind are satisfied 
alike. Even in a mere sketch, such as that of 
the blind beggar at the opening of the same romance, 
with the tap-tap of his stick to announce his coming, 
we get a remarkable example of effect secured by an 
economy of details; that tap-tapping gets on your 
nerves, you never forget it. It seems like the mem- 
ory of a childhood terror on the novelist's part. 
Throughout his fiction this chemic union of fact 
and the higher fact that is of the imagination marks 
his work. The smell of the heather is in our nostrils 



306 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

as we watch Allan's flight, and looking on at the 
fight in the round-house, there is a physical impres- 
sion of the stuffiness of the place; you smell as well 
as see it. Or for quite another key, take the night 
duel in " The Master of Ballantrae." You cannot 
think of it without feeling the bite of the bleak air; 
once more the twinkle of the candles makes the scene 
flicker before you ere it vanish into memory-land. 
Again, how you know that sea-coast site in the 
opening of " The Pavilion on the Links " — shiver 
at the " sly innuendoes of the place " ! Think how 
much the map in " Treasure Island " adds to the 
credibility of the thing. It is the believableness of 
Stevenson's atmospheres that prepare the reader for 
any marvels enacted in them. Gross, present-day, 
matter-of-fact London makes Dr. Jekyll and his 
worser half of flesh-and-blood credence. Few novel- 
ists of any race have beaten this wandering Scot 
in the power of representing character and envisag- 
ing it: and there can hardly be successful character- 
ization without this allied power of creating atmos- 
phere. 

Nothing is falser than to find him imitative in 
his representative work. There may be a suspicion 
of made-to-order journalism in " The Black Arrow," 
and the exception of " Prince Otto," which none the 
less we love for its gallant spirit and smiling grace, 
has been noted. But of the Scotch romances noth- 
ing farther from the truth could be said. They stand 



STEVENSON 307 

or fall by themselves: they have no model — save 
that of sound art and a normal conception of human 
life. Rarely does this man fall below his own high 
level or fail to set his private remarque upon his 
labor. It is in a way unfortunate that Stevenson, 
early in his career, so frankly confessed to prac- 
tising for his craft by the use of the best models: 
it has led to the silly misinterpretation which sees 
in all his literary effort nothing but the skilful echo. 
Such judgments remind us that criticism, which is 
intended to be a picture of another, is in reality a 
picture of oneself. In his lehrjahre Stevenson 
" slogged at his trade," beyond peradventure ; but 
no man came to be more individually and independ- 
ently himself. 

It has been spoken against him, too, that he could 
not draw women: here again he is quoted in his 
own despite and we see the possible disadvantage 
of a great writer's correspondence being given to 
the world — though not for more worlds than one 
would we miss the Letters. It is quite true that he 
is chary of petticoats in his earlier work: but when 
he reached " David Balfour " he drew an entrancing 
heroine; and the contrasted types of young girl 
and middle-aged woman in " Weir of Hermiston " 
offer eloquent testimonial to his increasing power in 
depicting the Eternal Feminine. At the same time, 
it may be acknowledged that the gallery of female 
portraits is not like Scott's for number and variety. 



308 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

nor like Thackeray's for distinction and charm — 
thick-hung with a delightful company whose eyes 
laugh level with our own, or, above us on the wall, 
look down with a starry challenge to our souls. But 
those whom Stevenson has hung there are not to be 
coldly recalled. 

Stevenson's work offers itself remarkably as a 
test for the thought that all worthily modern ro- 
manticism must not lack in reality, in true observa- 
tion, for success in its most daring flights. Gone 
forever is that abuse of the romantic which sub- 
stitutes effective lying for the vision which sees 
broadly enough to find beauty. The latter-day 
realist will be found in the end to have permanently 
contributed this, a welcome legacy to our time, 
after its excesses and absurdities are forgotten. 
Realism has taught romanticism to tell the truth, 
if it would succeed. Stevenson is splendidly real, 
he loves to visualize fact, to be true both to the 
appearances of things and the thoughts of the mind. 
He is aware that life is more than food — that it 
is a subjective state quite as much as an objective 
reality. He refers to himself more than once, half 
humorously, as a fellow whose forte lay in transcrib- 
ing what was before him, to be seen and felt, tasted 
and heard. This extremely modern denotement was 
a marked feature of his genius, often overlooked. 
He had a desire to know all manner of men; he 
had the noble curiosity of Montaigne; this it was, 



STEVENSON 309 

along with his human sympathy, that led him 
to rough it in emigrant voyages and railroad trips 
across the plains. It was this characteristic, unless 
I err, the lack of which in " Prince Otto " gives it 
a certain rococo air: he was consciously fooling 
in it, and felt the need of a solidly mundane footing. 
Truth to human nature in general, and that lesser 
truth which means accurate photography — his books 
give us both; the modern novelist, even a romancer 
like Stevenson, is not permitted to slight a landscape, 
an idiom nor a point of psychology : this one is never 
untrue to the trust. There is in the very nature 
of his language a proof of his strong hunger for 
the actual, the verifiable. No man of his genera- 
tion has quite such a grip on the vernacular: his 
speech rejoices to disport itself in root flavors; the 
only younger writer who equals him in this relish for 
reality of expression is Kipling. Further back it 
reminds of Defoe or Swift, at their best. Steven- 
son cannot abide the stock phrases with which most 
of us make shift to express our thoughts instead of 
using first-hand effects. There is, with all its music 
and suavity, something of the masculinity of the 
Old English in the following brief descriptive pas- 
sage from " Ebb-Tide " : 

*' There was little or no morning bank. A brighten- 
ing came in the East ; then a wash of some ineffable, 
faint, nameless hue between crimson and silver; and 
then coals of fire. These glimmered awhile on the sea 



310 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

line, and seemed to brighten and darken and spread 
out; and still the night and the stars reigned undis- 
turbed. It was as though a spark should catch and 
glow and creep along the foot of some heavy and 
almost incombustible wall-hanging, and the room 
itself be scarce menaced. Yet a little after, and the 
whole East glowed with gold and scarlet, and the 
hollow of heaven was filled with the daylight. The 
isle — the undiscovered, the scarce believed in — now 
lay before them and close aboard; and Herrick 
thought that never in his dreams had he beheld any- 
thing more strange and delicate." 

Stevenson's similes, instead of illustrating con- 
crete things by others less concrete, often reverse 
the process, as in the following : " The isle at this 
hour, with its smooth floor of sand, the pillared roof 
overhead and the pendant illumination of the lamps, 
wore an air of unreality, like a deserted theater or a 
public garden at midnight." Every image gets its 
foothold in some tap-root of reality. 

The place of Robert Louis Stevenson is not ex- 
plained by emphasizing the perfection of his tech- 
nique. Artist he is, but more: a vigorous modem 
mind with a definite and enheartening view of things, 
a philosophy at once broad and convincing. He 
is a psychologist intensely interested in the great 
questions — which, of course, means the moral ques- 
tions. Read the quaint Fable in which two of the 
characters in " Treasure Island " hold converse upon 



STEVENSON 311 

themselves, the story in which they participate and 
the author who made them. It is as if Stevenson 
stood aside a moment from the proper objectivity 
of the fictionist, to tell us in his own person that all 
his story-making was but an allegory of life, its 
joy, its mystery, its duty, its triumph and its doom. 
Although he is too much the artist to intrude philo- 
sophic comments upon human fate into his fiction, 
after the fashion of Thackeray or Meredith, the 
comment is there, implicit in his fiction, even as it 
is explicit in his essays, which are for this reason 
a sort of complement of his fiction: a sort of philo- 
sophical marginal note upon the stories. Steven- 
son was that type of modern mind which, no longer 
finding it possible to hold fast by the older, com- 
placent cock-sureness with regard to the theologian's 
heaven, is still unshaken in its conviction that life 
is beneficent, the obligation of duty imperative, the 
meaning of existence spiritual. Puzzlingly protean 
in his expressional moods (his conversations in 
especial), he was constant in this intellectual, or 
temperamental, attitude : " Though He slay me, yet 
will I trust Him," represents his feeling, and the 
strongest poem he ever wrote, " If This Were Faith," 
voices his deepest conviction. Meanwhile, the super- 
ficies of life offered a hundred consolations, a hundred 
pleasures, and Stevenson would have his fellowmen 
enjoy them in innocence, in kindness and good cheer. 
In fine, as a thinker he was a modernized Calvinist; 



312 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

as an artist he saw life in terms of action and 
pleasure, and by perfecting himself in the art of 
communicating his view of life, he was able, in a 
term of years all too short, to leave a series of 
books which, as we settle down to them in the twen- 
tieth century, and try to judge them as literature, 
have all the semblance of fine art. In any case, 
they will have been influential in the shaping of 
English fiction and will be referred to with respect 
by future historians of literature. It is hard to 
believe that the desiccation of Time will so dry them 
that they will not always exhale a rich fragrance 
of personality, and tremble with a convincing move- 
ment of life. 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION 



To exclude the living, as we must, in an estimate 
of the American contribution to the development 
we have been tracing, is especially unjust. Yet 
the principle must be applied. The injustice lies 
in the fact that an important part of the contribu- 
tion falls on the hither side of 1870 and has to do 
with authors still active. The modern realistic move- 
ment in English fiction has been affected to some 
degree by the work, has responded to the influence 
of the two Americans, Howells and James. What 
has been accomplished during the last forty years 
has been largely under their leadership. Mr. 
Howells, true to his own definition, has practised 
the more truthful handling of material in depicting 
chosen aspects of the native life. Mr. James, be- 
coming more interested in British types, has, after 
a great deal of analysis of his own countrymen, 
passed by the bridge of the international Novel to 
a complete absorption in transatlantic studies, mak- 
ing his peculiar application of the realistic formula 

313 



» 



314 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

to the inner life of the spirit: a curious compound, 
a cosmopolitan Puritan, an urbane student of souls. 
His share in the British product is perhaps ap- 
preciable ; but from the native point of view, at least, 
it would seem as if his earlier work were, and would 
remain, most representative both because of its 
motives and methods. Early or late, he has beyond 
question pointed out the way to many followers in 
the psychologic path: his influence, perhaps less ob- 
vious than Howells', is none the less undisputable. 
The development in the hands of writers younger 
than these veterans has been rich, varied, often note- 
worthy in quality. But of all this it is too soon 
to speak. 

With regard to the fictional evolution on Amer- 
ican soil, it is clear that four great writers, exclud- 
ing the living, separate themselves from the crowd: 
Irving, Cooper, Poe and Hawthorne. Moreover, 
two of these, Irving and Poe, are not novelists at 
all, but masters of the sketch or short story. It 
will be best, however, for our purpose to give them all 
some attention, for whatever the form of fiction they 
used, they are all influential in the development of 
the Novel. 

Other authors of single great books may occur 
to the student, perhaps clamoring for admission to 
a company so select. Yet he is likely always to 
come back and draw a dividing line here. Bret 
Harte, for instance, is dead, and in the short story 



THE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION S15 

of western flavor he was a pioneer of mark, the 
founder of a genre: probably no other writer is so 
significant in his field. But here again, although 
he essayed full-length fiction, it was not his forte. 
So, too, were it not that Mark Twain still cheers 
the land of the living with his wise fun, there would 
be for the critic the question, is he a novelist, humor- 
ist or essayist. Is " Roughing It " more typical 
of his genius than " Tom Sawyer " or " Huckleberry 
Finn " ? How shall we characterize " Puddin' Head 
Wilson " ? Under what category shall we place " A 
Yankee at the Court of King Arthur " and " Joan 
of Arc " ? The query reminds us once more that 
literature means personality as well as literary forms 
and that personality is more important than are 
they. And again we turn away regretfully (remem- 
bering that this is an attempt to study not fiction 
in all its manifestations, but the Novel) from the 
charming short stories — little classics in their kind — 
bequeathed by Aldrich, and are almost sorry that 
our judgment demands that we place him first as 
a poet. We think, too, of that book so unique 
in influence, " Uncle Tom's Cabin," nor forget that, 
besides producing it, Mrs. Stowe, in such a work as 
" Old Town Folks," started the long hne of studies 
of New England rustic life which, not confined to 
that section, have become so welcome a phase of 
later American art in fiction. Among younger 
authors called untimely from their labors, it is hard 



316 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

to resist the temptation to linger over such a figure 
as that of Frank Norris, whose vital way of handling 
realistic material with epic breath in his unfinished 
trilogy, gave so great promise for his future. 

It may be conceded that nothing is more worth 
mention in American fiction of the past generation 
than the extraordinary cultivation of the short-story, 
which Mr. Brander Matthews dignifies and unifies 
by a hyphen, in order to express his conviction that 
it is an essentially new art form, to study which is a 
fascinating quest, but aside from our main intention. 

II 

Having due regard then for perspective, and try- 
ing not to confuse historical importance with the 
more vital interest which implies permanent claims, 
it seems pretty safe to come back to Irving and Poe, 
to Cooper and Hawthorae. Even as in the sketch 
and tale Irving stands alone with such a master- 
piece as " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow " ; and Poe 
equally by himself with his tales of psychological hor- 
ror and mystery, so in longer fiction, Cooper and 
Hawthorne have made as distinct contributions in the 
domain of Romance. Their service is as definite for 
the day of the Romantic spirit, as is that of Howells 
and James for the modern day of realism so-called. 
It is not hard to see that Irving even in his fiction is 
essentially an essayist; that with him story was not 



THE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION 317 

the main thing, but that atmosphere, character and 
style were, — the personal comment upon life. One 
reads a sketch like " The Stout Gentleman," in every 
way a typical work, for anything but incident or plot. 
The Hudson River idyls, it may be granted, have 
somewhat more of story interest, but Irving seized 
them, ready-made for his use, because of their value 
for the picturesque evocation of the Past. He al- 
ways showed a keen sense of the pictorial and dra- 
matic in legend and history, as the " Alhambra " 
witnesses quite as truly as the sketches. " Brace- 
bridge Hall" and "The Sketch Book," whatever 
of the fictional they may contain, are the work of 
the essayist primarily, and Washington Irving will 
always, in a critical view, be described as a master 
of the English essay. No other maker of American 
literature affords so good an example of the inter- 
colation of essay and fiction: he recalls the organic 
relation between the Sir Roger de Coverley Papers 
and the eighteenth century Novel proper of a genera- 
tion later. 

His service to all later writers of fiction was large 
In that he taught them the use of promising native 
material that awaited the story-maker. His own 
use of it, the Hudson, the environs of Manhattan, 
was of course romantic, in the main. When in an 
occasional story he is unpleasant in detail or tragic 
in trend he seems less characteristic — so definitely 
was he a romanticist, seeking beauty and wishing to 



318 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

throw over life the kindly glamour of imaginative 
art. It is worth noting, however, that he looked 
forward rather than back, towards the coming real- 
ism, not to the incurable psetfdo-romanticism of the 
late eighteenth century, in his instinct to base his 
happenings upon the bedrock of truth — the external 
truth of scene and character and the inner truth 
of human psychology. 

Admirably a modem artist in this respect, his 
old-fashionedness, so often dilated upon, can easily 
be overstated. He not only left charming work in 
the tale, but helped others who came after to use 
their tools, furthering their art by the study of a 
good model. 

Nothing was more inevitable then that Cooper 
when he began fiction in mid-manhood should have 
written the romance: it was the dominant form in 
England because of Scott. But that he should have 
realized the unused resources of America and pro- 
duced a long series of adventure stories, taking a 
pioneer as his hero and illustrating the western life 
of settlement in his career, the settlement that was 
to reclaim a wilderness for a mighty civilization — 
that was a thing less to be expected, a truly epic 
achievement. The Leather Stocking Series was in 
the strictest sense an original performance — the sig- 
nificance of Fenimore Cooper is not likely to be 
exaggerated; it is quite independent of the question 
of his present hold upon mature readers, his faults 



THE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION 319 

of technique and the truth of his pictures. To have 
grasped such an opportunity and so to have used 
it as to become a great man-of-letters at a time 
when literature was more a private employ than 
the interest of the general — surely it indicates 
genuine personality, and has the mark of creative 
power. To which we may add, that Cooper is still 
vital in his appeal, as the statistics of our public 
libraries show. 

Moreover, incorrigible romancer that he was, he 
is a man of the nineteenth century, as was Irving, 
in the way he instinctively chose near-at-hand native 
material: he knew the Mohawk Valley by long resi- 
dence; he knew the Indian and the trapper there; 
and he depicted these types in a setting that was 
to him the most familiar thing in the world. In 
fact, we have in him an illustration of the modem 
writer who knows he must found his message firmly 
upon reality. For both Leather-stocking and 
Chingachgook are true in the broad sense, albeit the 
white trapper's dialect may be uncertain and the 
red man exhibit a dignity that seems Roman rather 
than aboriginal. The Daniel Boone of history must 
have had, we feel, the nobler qualities of Bumpo ; 
how otherwise did he do what it was his destiny to 
do.f^ In the same way, the Indian of Cooper is the 
red man in his pristine home before the day of fire- 
water and Agency methods. It may be that what 
to us to-day seems a too glorified picture is nearer 



320 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

the fact than we are in a position easily to realize. 
Cooper worked in the older method of primary colors, 
of vivid, even violent contrasts: his was not the 
school of subtleties. His women, for example, strike 
us as somewhat mechanical ; there is a sameness about 
them that means the failure to differentiate: the 
Ibsenian psycholog}^ of the sex was still to come. 
But this does not alter the obvious excellencies of 
the work. Cooper carried his romanticism in pre- 
senting the heroic aspects of the life he knew best 
into other fields where he walked with hardly less 
success : the revolutionary story illustrated by " The 
Spy," and the sea-tale of which a fine example is 
" The Pilot." He had a sure instinct for those 
elements of fiction which make for romance, and 
the change of time and place aff^ects him only in 
so far as it affects his familiarity with his materials. 
His experience in the United States Navy gave him 
a sure hand in the sea novels : and in a book like 
" The Spy " he was near enough to the scenes and 
characters to use studies practically contemporary. 
He had the born romanticist's natural affection for 
the appeal of the past and the stock elements can 
be counted upon in all his best fiction: salient per- 
sonalities, the march of events, exciting situations, 
and ever that arch-romantic lure, the one trick up 
the sleeve to pique anticipation. Hence, in spite 
of descriptions that seem over-long, a heavy-footed 
manner that lacks suppleness and variety, and un- 



THE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION 321 

deniable carelessness of construction, he is still loved 
of the young and seen to be a natural raconteur^ an 
improviser of the Dumas-Scott lineage and, even 
tested by the later tests, a noble writer of romance, 
a man whom Balzac and Goethe read with admira- 
tion: unquestionably influential outside his own land 
in that romantic mood of expression which, during 
the first half of the nineteenth century, was so wide- 
spread and fruitful. 

ni 

It is the plainer with every year that Poe's con- 
tribution to American fiction, and indeed to that 
of the nineteenth century, ignoring national bound- 
aries, stands by itself. Whatever his sources — and 
no writer appears to derive less from the past — he 
practically created on native soil the tale of fantasy, 
sensational plot, and morbid impressionism. His 
cold aloofness, his lack of spiritual import, unfitted 
him perhaps for the broader work of the novelist 
who would present humanity in its three dimensions 
with the light and shade belonging to Life itself. 
Confining himself to the tale which he believed could 
be more artistic because it was briefer and so the 
natural mold for a mono-mood, he had the genius 
so to handle color, music and suggestion in an 
atmosphere intense in its subjectivity, that confessed 
masterpieces were the issue. Whether in the ob- 
jective detail of " The Murders in the Rue Morgue," 



322 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

with its subtle illusion of realism, or in the nuances 
and delicatest tonality of " Ligeia," he has left 
specimens of the different degrees of romance which 
have not been surpassed, conquering in all but that 
highest style of romantic writing where the romance 
lies in an emphasis upon the noblest traits of man- 
kind. He is, it is not too much to say, well-nigh 
as important to the growth of modern fiction out- 
side the Novel form as he is to that of poetry, 
though possibly less unique on his prose side. His 
fascination is that of art and intellect: his material 
and the mastery wherewith he handles it conjoin 
to make his particular brand of magic. While some 
one story of Hoffman or Bulwer Lytton or Steven- 
son may be preferred, no one author of our time 
has produced an equal number of successes in the 
same key. It is instructive to compare him with 
Hawthorne because of a superficial resemblance with 
an underlying fundamental distinction. One phase 
of the Concord romancer's art results in stories which 
seem perhaps as somber, strange and morbid as those 
of Poe : " Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," " Rapa- 
cinni's Daughter," " The Birth Mark." They stand, 
of course, for but one side of his power, of which 
"The Great Stone Face" and "The Snow Image" 
are the brighter and sweeter. Thus Hawthorne's 
is a broader and more diversified accomplishment 
in the form of the tale. But the likeness has to 
do with subject-matter, not with the spirit of the 



THE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION 323 

work. The gloomiest of Hawthorne's short stories 
are spiritually sound and sweet: Poe's, on the con- 
trary, might be described as unmoral; they seem 
written by one disdaining all the touchstones of 
life, living in a land of eyrie where there is no moral 
law. He would no more than Lamb indict his very 
dreams. In the case of Hawthorne there is allegor- 
ical meaning, the lesson is never far to seek: a basis 
of common spiritual responsibility is always below 
one's feet. And this is quite as true of the long 
romances as of the tales. The result is that there 
is spiritual tonic in Hawthorne's fiction, while some- 
thing almost miasmatic rises from Poe, dropping 
a kind of veil between us and the salutary realities 
of existence. If Poe be fully as gifted, he is, for 
this reason, less sanely endowed. It may be con- 
ceded that he is not always as shudderingly sar- 
donic and removed from human sympathy as in 
" The Cask of Amontillado " or " The Black Cat"; 
yet it is no exaggeration to affirm that he is nowhere 
more typical, more himself. On the contrary, in 
a tale like " The Birth Mark," what were otherwise 
the horror and ultra-realism of it, is tempered by 
and merged in the suggestion that no man shall 
with impunity tamper with Nature nor set the de- 
light of the eyes above the treasures o'f the soul. 
The poor wife dies, because her husband cares more 
to remove a slight physical defect than he does for 
her health and life. So it cannot be said of the 



324 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

somber work in the tale of these two sons of genius 
that, 

"A common grayness silvers everything," 

since the gifts are so differently exercised and the 
artistic product of totally dissimilar texture. 
Moreover, Poe is quite incapable of the lovely 
naivete of " The Snow Image," or the sun-kissed 
atmosphere of the wonder-book. Humor, except in 
the satiric vein, is hardly more germane to the genius 
of Hawthorne than to that of Poe: its occasional 
exercise is seldom if ever happy. 

Although most literary comparisons are futile be- 
cause of the disparateness of the things compared, 
the present one seems legitimate in the cases of Poe 
and Hawthorne, superficially so alike in their short- 
story work. 

IV 

In the romances in which he is, by common consent, 
our greatest practitioner, to be placed first indeed 
of all who have written fiction of whatever kind on 
American soil, Hawthorne never forsakes — subtle, 
spiritual, elusive, even intangible as he may seem — 
the firm underfooting of mother earth. His themes 
are richly human, his psychologic truth (the most 
modern note of realism) unerring in its accuracy 
and insight. As part of his romantic endowment, 
he prefers to place plot and personages in the dim 



THE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION 325 

backward of Time, gaining thus in perspective and 
ampleness of atmosphere. He has told us as much 
in the preface to " The House of The Seven Gables," 
that wonderful study in subdued tone-colors. That 
pronunciamento of a great artist (from which in an 
earlier chapter quotation has been made) should not 
be overlooked by one who essays to get a hint of 
his secret. He is always exclusively engaged with 
questions of conscience and character; like George 
Meredith, his only interest is in soul-growth. This 
is as true in the " Marble Faun " with its thought 
of the value of sin in the spiritual life, or in " The 
Blithedale Romance," wherein poor Zenobia learns 
how infinitely hard it is for a woman to oppose the 
laws of society, as it is in the more obvious lesson 
of " The Scarlet Letter." In this respect the four 
romances are all of a piece: they testify to their 
spiritual parentage. " The Scarlet Letter," if the 
greatest, is only so for the reason that the theme 
is deepest, most fundamental, and the by-gone New 
England setting most sympathetic to the author's 
loving interest. Plainly an allegory, it yet escapes 
the danger of becoming therefore poor fiction, by 
being first of all a study of veritable men and women, 
not lay-figures to carry out an argument. The eyes 
of the imagination can always see Esther Prynne 
and Dimmesdale, honest but weak man of God, the 
evil Chillingworth and little Pearl who is all child, 
unearthly though she be, a symbol at once of lost 



326 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

innocence and a hope of renewed purity. No pale 
abstractions these; no folk in fiction are more be- 
lieved in : they are of our own kindred with whom we 
suffer or fondly rejoice. In a story so metaphysical 
as " The House of The Seven Gables," full justice to 
which has hardly been done (it was Hawthorne's 
favorite), while the background offered by the his- 
toric old mansion is of intention low-toned and dim, 
there is no obscurity, though plenty of innuendo 
and suggestion. The romance is a noble specimen 
of that use of the vague which never falls into the 
confusion of indeterminate ideas. The theme is 
startlingly clear: a sin is shown working through 
generations and only to find expiation in the fresh 
health of the younger descendants: life built on a 
lie must totter to its fall. And the shell of all 
this spiritual seething — the gabled Salem house — 
may at last be purified and renovated for a posterity 
which, because it is not paralyzed by the dark past, 
can also start anew with hope and health, while every 
room of the old home is swept through and cleansed 
by the wholesome winds of heaven. 

Forgetting for a moment the immense spiritual 
meaning of this noble quartet of romances, and re- 
garding them as works of art in the straiter sense, 
they are felt to be practically blameless examples 
of the principle of adapting means to a desired 
end. As befits the nature of the themes, the move- 
ment in each case is slow, pregnant with significance, 



THE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION 327 

cumulative in effect, the tempo of each in exquisite 
accord with the particular motive: compared with 
" The Scarlet Letter," " The House of The Seven 
Gables " moves somewhat more quickly, a slight in- 
crease to suit the action : it is swiftest of all in " The 
Blithedale Romance," with its greater objectivity 
of action and interest, its more mundane air: while 
there is a cunning unevenness in the two parts of 
" The Marble Faun," as is right for a romance 
which first presents a tragic situation (as external 
climax) and then shows in retarded progress that 
inward drama of the soul more momentous than any 
outer scene or situation can possibly be. After Dona- 
tello's deed of death, because what follows is psycho- 
logically the most important part of the book, the 
speed slackens accordingly. Quiet, too, and un- 
sensational as Hawthorne seems, he possessed a 
marked dramatic power. His denouements are over- 
whelming in grip and scenic value: the stage effect 
of the scaffold scene in " The Scarlet Letter," the 
murder scene in the " Marble Faun," the tragic 
close of Zenobia's career in " The Blithedale Ro- 
mance," such scenes are never arbitrary and de- 
tached; they are tonal, led up to by all that goes 
before. The remark applies equally to that awful 
picture in " The House of The Seven Gables," where 
the Judge sits dead in his chair and the minutes 
are ticked off by a seemingly sentient clock. An 
element in this tonality is naturally Hawthorne's 



S28 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

style: it is the best illustration American literature 
affords of excellence of pattern in contrast with the 
" purple patch " manner of writing so popular in 
modem diction. 

Congruity, the subjection of the parts to the 
whole, and to the end in view — the doctrine of key — 
Hawthorne illustrates all this. If we do not mark 
passages and delectate over phrases, we receive an 
exquisite sense of harmony — and harmony is the last 
word of style. It is this power which helps to make 
him a great man-of-letters, as well as a master of 
romance. One can imagine him neither making haste 
to furnish " copy " nor pausing by the way for orna- 
ment's sake. He knew that the only proper decora- 
tion was an integral efflorescence of structure. He 
looked beyond to the fabric's design : a man decently 
poor in this world's gear, he was more concerned 
with good work than with gain. Of such are art's 
kingdom of heaven. 

Are there flaws in the weaving? They are small 
indeed. His didacticism is more in evidence in the 
tales than in the romances, where the fuller body 
allows the writer to be more objective: still, judged 
by present-day standards, there are times when he 
is too obviously the preacher to please modern taste. 
In " The Great Stone Face," for instance, it were 
better, one feels, if the moral had been more veiled, 
nDore subtly implied. As to this, it is well to 
remember that criticism changes its canons with the 



THE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION 329 

years and that Hawthorne simply adapted himself 
(unconsciously, as a spokesman of his day) to con- 
temporaneous standards. His audience was less 
averse from the principle that the artist should on 
no account usurp the pulpit's function. If the art- 
ist-preacher had a golden mouth, it was enough. 
This has perhaps always been the attitude of the 
mass of mankind. 

A defect less easy to condone is this author's 
attempts at humor. They are for the most part 
lumbering and forced : you feel the effort. ' Haw- 
thorne lacked the easy manipulation of this gift 
and his instinct served him aright when he avoided 
it, as most often he did. A few of the short stories 
are conceived in the vein of burlesque, and such it 
is a kindness not to name. They give pain to any 
who love and revere so mighty a spirit. In the 
occasional use of humor in the romances, too, he 
does not always escape just condemnation: as where 
Judge Pincheon is described taking a walk on a 
snowy morning down the village street, his visage 
wreathed in such spacious smiles that the snow 
on either side of his progress melts before the 
rays. 

For some the style of Hawthorne may now be felt 
to possess a certain artificiality: the price paid for 
that effect of stateliness demanded by the theme and 
suggestive also of the fact that the words were 
written over half a century ago. In these days 



330 MASTERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

of photographic realism of word and idiom, our 
conception of what is fit in diction has suffered a 
sea-change. Our ear is adjusted to another tune. 
Admirable as have been the gains in broadening the 
native resources of speech by the introduction of 
old English elements, the eighteenth century and the 
early years of the nineteenth can still teach us, and 
it is not beyond credence that the eventual modem 
ideal of speech may react to an equilibrium of mingled 
native and foreign-fetched words. In such an event 
a writer like Hawthorne will be confirmed in his 
mastery. 

Remarkable, indeed, and latest in time has been 
the romantic reaction from the extremes of realistic 
presentation: it has given the United States, even as 
it has England, some sterling fiction. This we can 
see, though it is a phenomenon too recent to offer 
clear deductions as yet. What appears to be the 
main difference between it and the romantic inherit- 
ance from Scott and Hawthorne.'^ One, if not the 
chief divergence, would seem to be the inevitable 
degeneration which comes from haste, mercantile 
pressure, imitation and lack of commanding author- 
ity. There is plenty of technique, comparatively 
little personality. Yet it may be unfair to the pres- 
ent to make the comparison, for the incompetents 
buzz in our ears, while time has mercifully stilled 
the bogus romances of G. P. R. James, et id omne 
genus. 



THE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION SSI 

But allowing for all distortion of time, a creative 
figure like that of Hawthorne still towers, serene and 
alone, above the little troublings of later days, and 
like his own Stone Face, reflects the sun and the 
storm, bespeaking the greater things of the human 
spirit. 



THE END 



INDEX 



Absentee, The, by Edgeworth, 
100. 

Adam Bede, by George Eliot, 
popularity, 227, 229; auto- 
biographical note and other 
sources of strength, 227; 
author's first novel and her 
feeling toward, 228; worth 
as picture of contemporary 
middle-class life, 228; fresh 
treatment of old theme, 
229; also, 222. 

Addison, Joseph, and genesis 
of modern journalism, 7. 

Adventures of Ferdinand 
Count Fathom, by Smollett, 
80. 

Adventures of Harry Rich- 
mond, by Meredith, pur- 
pose and teaching, 287, 288; 
composite character of dom- 
inant figure, 288; also, 281, 
284. 

Adventures of Joseph An- 
drews and His Friend Abra- 
ham Adams, by Fielding, 
publication in 17Jt2, 49; sug- 
gested by Pamela, 49; re- 
ception in London, 50, 55; 
contrasted with work of 
Richardson, 50; little plot, 
52. 

Adventures of Peregrine 
Pickle, by Smollett, 79, 80. 

Adventures of Philip, by 
Thackeray, 204. 

Adventures of Roderick Ran- 



dom, by Smollett, publica- 
tion and contemporaries, 73; 
pictures life in Jamaica and 
in navy, 76; doubtfully 
autobiographic, 76. 

Adventures of Sir Launcelot 
Graves, by Smollett, 81. 

Advocates' Library, Edin- 
burgh, 133. 

Age limit in literary produc- 
tion, Richardson, Defoe, 
Eliot, Browning, Du Mau- 
rier, De Morgan, 25. 

Alchemist, The, by Fielding, 
59. 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, re- 
ferred to, 315. 

Alhambra, The, by Irving, 
317. 

Alton Locke, by Kingsley, 
comparison with Felix Holt, 
249. 

Altruism, Propagation of, in 
eighteenth century, 9. 

Amazing Marriage, The, by 
Meredith, 280. 

Amelia, by Fielding, his last 
novel, 67; comparison with 
Tom Jones, 67; autobiogra- 
phical, 68; lack of popular- 
ity, 69. 

Anglo-Saxon fiction, reserves 
and delicacies of, 143. 

Animals, their part in modern 
novels, 17. 

Anne, Queen, new social tend- 
encies during reign, 6. 



333 



334 



INDEX 



Anne, Queen, period, Senti- 
mentality of, 30. 

Antiquary, The, by Scott, 126; 
see also, Waverley Novels. 

Arabian Nights, model for 
Shaving of Shagpat, 281. 

Argent, U, by Zola, 165. 

Aristophanes, referred to, 281. 

Arms dale, by Collins, 260. 

Arnold, Matthew, Hardy com- 
pared with, 278. 

Art et Morale, L', by Brune- 
tiere, 54. 

Art for Art's Sake, 198, 199, 
262. 

As You Like It, by Shaks- 
pere, 4. 

Ascham, Roger, quoted, 42. 

Assisi, St. Francis of, quoted, 
17. 

Assommoir, V, by Zola, 264. 

Austen, Jane, attitude toward 
writing, 19 ; a finished artist, 
71; satirizes romances of 
mysteiy and horror, 96; 
position as realist, 102; life 
at Steventon, 102; and at 
Bath, 103; chronologic set- 
ting, 103; manner of writing 
and technique, 103, 116; con- 
trasted with Fanny Burney, 
103; works published in 
parts, 104; amateur writing 
paradox of literature, 104; 
example of recognizing limi- 
tations, 104; power of self- 
criticism, 105; work likened 
to miniature painting, 105; 
familiarity with her subject, 
105; King George III. in- 
vites her to write a romance 
of House of Coburg, 105; 
refusal, 106; characteristics 
of work, 106, 108; plots of 
principal novels, 107; 
method as fiction maker. 



109 ; characters familiar 
types, 110; heroines con- 
trasted with those of Hardy, 
110; danger and charm. 111, 
121 ; instances of over- 
drawn character, 113; of 
contracted views and class- 
distinctions, 114; compari- 
son with George Eliot and 
Meredith, 115; asd with 
Dickens, 120; plots skilfully 
conducted, 116; based on 
love stories, 118; style, 120; 
comparison with Mrs. Stowe, 
121; and others, 122; with 
Scott, 143; influence on 
realism, 175; opinion of 
Howells, 175; Trollope com- 
pared with, 253, 257; re- 
ferred to, 99, 150. 
Autocrat of the Breakfast 
Table, by Holmes, 8. 

Bacon, Francis, and the Eng- 
lish essay, 7. 

Balzac, Honore de, effect of 
crowded existence in work, 
QQ', personality merged in 
characters, 75; early studies 
of the Human Comedy, 152; 
acknowledges debt to Beyle, 
152; leader and shaper of 
modern fiction, 154; colossal 
work of Human Comedy, 
154; habits while writing, 
160; power of envisaging 
war, 164; place in, and con- 
ception of realism, 167, 169; 
method adopted by Dickens, 
167; psychologic analysis, 
167; conception of duty of 
social historian, 169; Shaks- 
p e r i a n universality of 
work, 170; limitations of 
time and place, 170; atti- 
tude as a modern, 171; in- 



INDEX 



335 



fluence over nineteenth cen- 
tury fiction, 171; personal 
fascination upon reader, 
171; death, 172; contribu- 
tion to fiction, 262; referred 
to, 110, 141, 151, 152, 321; 
see also. Human Comedy. 

Barnaby Budge, by Dickens, 
181. 

Barry Lyndon, by Thackeray, 
203, 288. 

Bath, England, 103. 

Beach of Falesa, by Steven- 
son, 303. 

Beaconsfield, Earl of, see Dis- 
raeli, Benjamin, Earl of 
Beaconsfield. 

Beau Nash, 153. 

Beaucaire, 153. 

Beauchamp's Career, by Mere- 
dith, valuable treatment of 
English politics, 284, 293; 
mannerisms of style, 294. 

Becky Sharp, contrasted with 
Sarah Gamp, 184; compari- 
son with Countess de Saldar 
in Evan Harrington, 287; 
see also. Vanity Fair. 

Belinda, by Edgeworth, 100. 

Beowulf, 3. 

Beyle, Henri (pseud. Sten- 
dahl), introduced novel of 
psychic analysis, 151; fol- 
lowed by Balzac and others, 
152; held posts under Na- 
poleon, 152; first great real- 
ist in France, 166. 

Birth Mark, The, by Haw- 
thorne, 322, 323 

Black Arrow, The, by Steven- 
son, 306. 

Black Cat, The, by Poe, 323. 

Bleak House, by Dickens, 
189. 

" Blackguard Parson, The," 
Sterne called, 86. 



Blithedale Romance, The, by 
Hawthorne, 325. 

Book of Snobs, The, by 
Thackeray, its satire, 200, 
201. 

Boone, Daniel, referred to, 
319. 

Borrow, George, referred to, 
261. 

Boswell, James, prejudice 
against Fielding, 51. 

Bottle Imp, The, by Steven- 
son, 303. 

Boxhill, Surrey, home of 
Meredith, 282. 

Bracebridge Hall, by Irving, 
317. 

British Society of Authors, 
Meredith President of, 282. 

Brodingagnians, The, see Gul- 
liver's Travels. 

Brontes, The, isolation in real- 
istic age, 259; personal 
qualities and evaluation of 
work, 259; attitude of Char- 
lotte Bronte toward Thack- 
eray, 259; referred to, 244. 

Brookfield, Mrs., friend of 
Thackeray, 201. 

Brown, Charles Brockden, 
Wieland, 96. 

Browning, Robert, age at pub- 
lication of The Ring and the 
Book, 25; Meredith com- 
pared with, 293; quoted or 
referred to, 119, 156. 

"Browning of Prose, The," 
Meredith called, 293. 

Brunetiere, Ferdinand, L'Art 
et Morale, quoted, 44, 54; 
also, 157. 

Bulwer, Edward George Earle 
Lytton, Baron Lytton, com- 
parison with Austen, 122; 
chronologic setting, 244 ; 
poet, dramatist, and diplo- 



336 



INDEX 



mat, 245; comparison with 
Disraeli, 248; mixture of 
sentimentality and truth, 
248; hold on present-day 
readers, 248; referred to, 
176, 227, 260, 322. 

Burns, Robert, referred to, 
131. 

Burney, Fanny, first woman 
novelist of importance, 98, 
99; Dr. Johnson's iove for, 
99; fashionable society de- 
picted in Evelina and Ce- 
cilia, 99; value of her Diary, 
99; quoted, 19. 

Byron, George Gordon Noel, 
Lord, attitude toward liter- 
ary professionalism, 20. 

Caesar Birotteau, by Balzac, 
165; see also, Human Com- 
edy. 

Caleb Williams, by Godwin, 
95. 

Caricature, in Pamela, 48; in 
Dickens, 183; aim, 183; test, 
184. 

Carlisle, Lady Mary, 103. 

Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 131, 
149. 

Cask of Amontillado, The, by 
Poe, 323. 

Castle of Otranto, by Wal- 
pole, 96. 

Castle Rackrent, by Edge- 
worth, 100. 

Cathedral series, by Trollope, 
depicting clerical scenes in 
south-western England, 256. 

Cecilia, by Burney, 99. 

Cervantes, Miguel, referred to, 
60, 190. 

Character sketch, as found in 
The Spectator, 7. 

Chartreuse de Parme, by 
Beyle, 152. 



Chaucer, Goeffrey, referred to, 
4, 138, 160. 

Chesterfield, Lord, quoted, 11. 

Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 
quoted or referred to, 177, 
190. 

Chimes, The, by Dickens, 190. 

Chivalry, Prose romance of, 
3. 

Chouans, The, by Balzac, 157; 
see also, Human Comedy. 

Christmas, Feeling toward, in- 
fluenced by Dickens' Christ- 
mas stories, 191. 

Christmas Carol, by Dickens, 
its influence, 190. 

Christmas Stories, by Dickens, 
see The Chimes, Christmas 
Carol, Cricket on the 
Hearth. 

Chronicles of Barset, by Trol- 
lope, 255; see also, Cathe- 
dral series. 

Clarissa Harlowe, by Richard- 
son, plot and form, 35; slow 
movement and great length, 
36; picture of society of the 
period, 38; public reception, 
39 ; contemporaneous with 
Roderick Random, 73; con- 
trasted with Vicar of Wake- 
field, 92; also, 161. 

Cloister and the Hearth, by 
Reade, 249, 251. 

Cobden-Sanderson, T. J., home 
at Hammersmith, London, 
26. 

Coffee-house, Eighteenth-cen- 
tury, place in social life, 6. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 
quoted, 31, 59. 

Collins, Wilkie, skilful in 
plot, 260; referred to, 59, 
176. 

Colloquial manner. Fielding 
master of, 52, 



INDEX 



337 



Comedie Humaine, La, see 
Human Comedy. 

Comedy, genius for, in Field- 
ing, 50; and broadly pre- 
sented by him, 61; of Mo- 
liere likened to Austen, 111; 
description by Meredith, 
111; unrivalled in Evan 
Harrington, 286. 

Congreve, William, knowledge 
of early literary forms, 5; 
visited by Voltaire, 19. 

Coningsby, by Disraeli, 245. 

Connoisseur, The, suggests 
factory for making novels, 
73. 

Cooper, James Fenimore, 
Smollett compared with, 74; 
romances based on pioneer 
life, 318; significance to 
literature, 318 ; creative 
power and present-day ap- 
peal, 319; portrayal of the 
Indian, 319; sea-tales, 320; 
qualities and influences as 
a romancer, 320. 

Country Doctor, The, by Bal- 
zac, 90, 160; see also, Hu- 
man Comedy. 

Cousin Pons, by Balzac, 164; 
see also. Human Comedy. 

Cousine Bette, by Balzac, 164, 
166; see also, Human Com- 
edy. 

Cricket on the Hearth, by 
Dickens, 190. 

Crusades, The, 140. 

Cyrano de Bergerac, quoted, 
119. 

Dana, Richard Henry, jr., 
referred to, 77. 

Daniel Deronda, by George 
Eliot, story subsidiary to 
problem, 235; author's final 
novel, 239; double motive 



and resulting lack of sym- 
metry, 240; merits and les- 
sons, 240; large percentage 
of quotable sayings, 241 ; il- 
lustrates author's decad- 
ence, 241. 

Dark A fair, A, by Balzac, 
164; see also. Human Com- 
edy. 

Daudet, Alphonse, referred to, 
173, 273. 

David Balfour, by Stevenson, 
sequel to Kidnapped, 301, 
307. 

David Copperfield, by Dick- 
ens, represents author's 
young prime, 181; Vanity 
Fair compared with, 182; 
evaluation, 186; also, 177, 
188. 

Day, Thomas, Sanford and 
ilerton, 95. 

Defoe, Daniel, age at publica- 
tion of Robinson Crusoe, 
25 ; Richardson compared 
with, 46; Moll Flanders, 47; 
shows possibility of power- 
ful story including woman, 
119; Stevenson compared 
with, 309; referred to, 225. 

Democratic note, in eighteenth- 
century novelists, 15; preva- 
lent in Pamela, 30. 

De Morgan, William, age limit 
in literary production, 25; 
also, 36. 

Denis Duval, by Thackeray, 
plan of, found after 
author's death, 211. 

Desperate Remedies, by 
Hardy, 270. 

Diana of the Crossways, by 
Meredith, comparison with 
Daniel Deronda^ 240; at- 
traction for American 
readers, 290; dissertation on 



INDEX 



mental relation of sexes, 
290; plot, 291; mannerisms 
of style, 294; also, 284. 
Dickens, Charles, use of epi- 
sode, 55; eifect of crowded 
existence, 66; growth of 
mastery in style, 120 ; adopts 
Balzac's method, 167; early 
preparation in journalism, 
176, 177; native gifts, 176; 
place in Victorian literature, 
176; critical reaction in his 
favor, 177; demerits of 
early work, 178; new creat- 
ive power shown in Pick- 
wick Papers, 179; unsur- 
passed personal appeal of 
characters, 180; passes from 
episode and comic charac- 
terization to novel, 180; 
earlier and later works con- 
trasted, 181; height reached 
in David Copj^erfield, 182; 
tendency to caricature, 183, 
184; master of omissions, 
184; extreme of good and 
bad in one book, 185; evalu- 
ation of various works, 186; 
domestic circumstances 
while writing Tale of Two 
Cities, 187; theatrical tend- 
ency and dramatic sense, 
187; publication of Great 
Expectations, 189; power to 
depict complexity of life, 
190; Christmas Stories, 190; 
personal relation between 
author, reader, and charac- 
ters, 192; one reason for 
popularity, 193; Zola con- 
trasted with, 193; demo- 
cratic pleader for justice 
and sympathy, 194; deepest 
significance, 194; Thackeray 
compared with, 196, 203, 
205, 208, 216; modern note 



in his work, 196; fluctua- 
tions in popularity and their 
causes, 198; method of pub- 
lication, 209 ; congratulates 
George Eliot on publication 
of Scenes from Clerical 
Life, 229; Disraeli com- 
pared with, 246; also Reade, 
250; and Trollope, 253; 
habit of exaggeration dis- 
liked by Trollope, 258; com- 
edy of Meredith compared 
with that of, 287; quoted or 
referred to, 39, 151, 173, 175, 
219, 220, 233, 261, 290, 305. 

Dickens, John (father of 
Charles Dickens), original 
of Micawber and of Father 
of the Marshalsea, 176. 

Diderot, Denis, quoted, 39. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of 
Beaconsfield, comparison 
with Austen, 122; chrono- 
logic setting, 244; Premier 
of England, 245 ; vogue dur- 
ing middle of nineteenth 
century, 245; political tril- 
ogy valuable as studies of 
the time, 245; Dickens com- 
pared with, 246; style, 246; 
lack of earnestness of pur- 
pose, 246 ; criticized by Trol- 
lope, 247; Bulwer compared 
with, 248; referred to, 176, 
226, 227, 260. 

Dobson, Austin, referred to, 
69. 

Doctor Birch and his Young 
Friends, by Thackeray, 208. 

Doctor Heidegger's Experi- 
ment, by Hawthorne, 322. 

Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 
by Stevenson, 301, 306. 

Domhey and Son, by Dickens, 
represents author's young 
prime, 181; evaluation, 186; 



INDEX 



339 



power in depicting complex- 
ity of life, 189; also, 1S2. 

Don Quixote, by Cervantes, 50, 
288. 

Drama, form of story-telling, 
2; popularity during Eliza- 
bethan period, 4; present- 
day form influenced by 
growing importance of 
woman, 20; also, 187. 

Duchess L' Anglais, The, by 
Balzac, 161; see also. Hu- 
man Comedy. 

Dumas, Alexandre, fils, re- 
ferred to, 173. 

Dumas, Alexandre, pdre, liter- 
ary menage, 173; dramatic 
power, 188; referred to, 129, 
228, 302, 321. 

Du Maurier, George, age limit 
in literary production, 25; 
referred to, 21. 

Dynasts, The, by Hardy, 268, 
277. 

Ebb-Tide, by Stevenson, pi- 
caresque and picturesque, 
301 ; command of exotic ma- 
terial, 303; originality of ex- 
pression illustrated, 309. 

Ebers, Georg, referred to, 133. 

Edgeworth, Maria, various 
types portrayed, 100; re- 
ferred to, 98. 

Edinburgh, Advocates' Li- 
brary, 133. 

Education, Problem of, study 
of in Ordeal of Richard 
Feveril, 285. 

Egoist, The, by Meredith, 
Woman of Thirty compared 
with, 163; test of reader's 
attitude toward author, 289 ; 
Stevenson's opinion, 289 ; 
analytic study of character 
rather than novel, 289; Sir 



Charles Grandison com- 
pared with, 290; style, 294; 
also, 40, 284. 

Eighteenth Century, social life 
during, 6; influence of the- 
ater, 8; propagation of al- 
truism during, 9; English 
fiiction of, a type for Eu- 
rope, 11, 12; French fiction 
in essay form, 11; demo- 
cratic note, 15; novel-writ- 
ing in, 18; attitude toward 
literary professionalism, 19; 
social ethics in Pamela, 29; 
novel of, contrasted with 
that of to-day, 31, 35; low 
standard of morals, 53; 
literature an aside, 60; rami- 
fications of the novel, 84; 
place of Goldsmith in, 88; 
tendency to preach in story 
form, 95; and toward mys- 
tery and horror, 96; real- 
istic portrayal of contem- 
porary society, 98; popular- 
ity of women novelists, 98. 

Eighteenth-century cofi^ee- 

house, place in social life, 
6. 

Eliot, George, age limit in lit- 
erary production, 25, 240; 
Austen compared with, 112, 
115; true realist, 218; con- 
ception of artistic mission, 
219; new psychologic ele- 
ment comes into fiction, 219; 
early life and views, 220; 
their influence on her work, 

222, 223; sympathetic chron- 
icler of middle-class country 
life, 221; personal develop- 
ment and later works, 221, 

223, 224; positivism, 222; 
friendship with the Brays, 
223 ; negative philosophy, 
225; urged to write by 



S40 



INDEX 



Lewes, 225; main interest 
development of character, 
227; historical theme in Bo- 
mola, 232; dividing line be- 
tween early and late work, 
235; balance of early and 
late work, 241; philosophy 
of later life, 242; tonic 
force, 243; tendency to di- 
dacticism, 277; referred to, 
151, 175, 261. 

Elizabethan criticism, 5. 

Elizabethan period, fiction as- 
suming definiteness of pur- 
pose, 3; theater, 8; also, 140. 

Elizabethans, Simplicity of, 
shown by Hardy, 274. 

Emma, by Austen, 103, 108. 

Endymion, by Disraeli, 246, 
247. 

English society. Portrayal of, 
by Trollope, 254. 

Epic poetry, oldest form of 
story-telling, 2. 

Episode Under the Terror, by 
Balzac, 164; see also, Hu- 
man Comedy. 

Essay, as found in The Spec- 
tator, 7; natural develop- 
ment into fiction, 8; form 
of eighteenth-century French 
fiction, 11; also, 317. 

Essayists, Sterne leader of, 
86; see also, Irving, Steven- 
son. 

EugSnie Grandet, by Balzac, 
138, 160; see also, Human 
Comedy. 

Evan Harrington, by Mere- 
dith, satiric character sketch 
and unrivalled comedy, 286; 
purpose, plot, and evalua- 
tion, 286; also, 281, 284. 

Evans, Mary Anne, see George 
Eliot, pseud. 

Evelina, by Burney, 99, 



Evolution, Social, shown by 
changing standards of mor- 
als, 54. 

Excursion, The, by Words- 
worth, 156. 

Expedition of Humphrey 
Clinker, by Smollett, 81. 

Factory for novel-making 
suggested by The Connois- 
seur, 73. 

Faery Queen, The, by Spenser, 
156. 

Far from the Madding Crowd, 
by Hardy, 271. 

Farina, historical novelette, by 
Meredith, 285. 

Felix Holt, Radical, by George 
Eliot, dividing line between 
early and late work, 235; 
causes of lack of popular- 
ity, 235; also, 225. 

Fiction, various forms, 1, 3; 
place in modern culture, 1; 
precedence in time, 2; as- 
suming definiteness of pur- 
pose, 3; cultivation as prose 
romance of chivalry, 3; de- 
velopment into novel, 4; 
severance between romance 
of heroism and study of 
contemporary society, 5; re- 
lation to essay, 7; most 
democratic literary form, 
15; Anglo-Saxon reserves 
and delicacies of, 143; place 
of problem novel in, 241; 
see also, Novel. 

Fiction, English, of eighteenth 
century, type for Europe, 
11, 12; uncertain state at 
beginning of nineteenth cen- 
tury, 150; three great lead- 
ers of realism, 151 ; later in- 
fluence of French fiction, 
151. 



INDEX 



341 



Fiction, French, of eighteenth 
century, essay form, 11. 

Fiction, French, Modern, sug- 
gestive prurience of, 33; see 
also, Balzac, Madame de La 
Fayette, Le Sage, Prevost, 
Rousseau. 

Fiction, Modern, mingling of 
romance and realism, 
125. 

Fielding, Henry, attitude of 
Walpole toward, 19; birth 
and growth of novel, 34; 
influence of Richardson on, 
48; publication of Adven- 
tures of Joseph Andrews, 
49 ; Richardson contrasted 
with, 50, 65, 67, 69; opinion 
of Dr. Johnson, 51; preju- 
dice of Boswell, 51 ; master 
of colloquial manner, 52 ; in- 
fluence on modern fiction, 
53; coarseness, 53; episodic 
character of work, 54; facts 
of his life, 48, 56, 57; pub- 
lication of Mr. Jonathan 
Wild the Great, 56; and of 
Tom Jones, 57; fiction-writ- 
ing an aside, 57; first great 
realist, 61 ; publication of 
Amelia, 67; failing health 
and death, 67, 69; criticized 
by Lady Montagu, 68; place 
among later writers, 71 ; 
popularity shown in imita- 
tion, 72; Smollett compared 
with, 74, 83; also Austen, 
102; linked with Thackeray 
and George Eliot, 219; Mere- 
dith compared with, 283; 
referred to, 151, 212, 214. 

Fitzgerald, Edward, quoted, 
200. 

Flaubert, Gustave, place in let- 
ters, 172; referred to, 140, 
152. 



France, Anatole, criticism of 

Zohi, 193. 
France, Cultivation of prose 

romance in, 4. 
Franco-Prussian war, 262. 
French Revolution, effect on 

literature, 124. 

Gadshill, home of Dickens, 
197. 

Gamp, Sarah, contrasted with 
Becky Sharp, 184; also, 183. 

Garrick, David, The Regicide 
refused by, 79; quoted, 58, 
66. 

Gentleman's Magazine, quoted, 
72. 

George IIL, King, invites 
Austen to write romance of 
House of Coburg, 105. 

Georges, The, new social tend- 
encies during reigns of, 6; 
also, 140. 

Gil Bias, by Le Sage, trans- 
lated by Smollett, 75; also, 
4, 50, 74, 83, 179. 

Gissing, George, referred to, 
199. 

Godwin, William, Caleb Wil- 
liams, 95. 

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 
von, influenced by English 
fiction writers, 12; praise of 
Vicar of Wakefield, 93; re- 
ferred to, 321. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, birth and 
growth of novel, 34; place 
in eighteenth century litera- 
ture, 88; quoted or referred 
to, 31, 72, 83, 86. 

Great Expectations, by Dick- 
ens, evaluation, 186, 189; 
power in picturing complex- 
ity of life, 189; also, 183. 

Great Haggarty Diamond, by 
Thackeray, 203. 



342 



INDEX 



Great Provincial Man in 
Paris, by Balzac; see also, 
Human Comedy. 

Great Stone Face, by Haw- 
thorne, 322. 

Griff House, home of George 
Eliot, 220, 222, 223. 

Gulliver's Travels, by Swift, 
priority as to realism, 45; 
influence on eighteenth cen- 
tury novel, 84; publication, 
87. 

Guy Mannering, by Scott, 123, 
126, 128; see also, Waverley 
Novels. 

Hammersmith, London, home 
of Richardson and others, 
26. 

Hampshire, England, Life in, 
depicted by Trollope, 256; 
see also, Selborne, Steventon. 

Hand of Ethelberta, by 
Hardy, 271. 

Hanska, Madame, 158. 

Hants, see Hampshire, Eng- 
land. 

Hard Times, by Dickens, 186. 

Hardy, Thomas, growth of 
truth in literature shown by 
his dialogue as compared 
with that of earlier novel- 
ists, 13; heroines contrasted 
with those of Austen, 110; 
Trollope compared with, 
257; literary genealogy, 
264; influence of Zola, 265; 
comparison with Meredith, 
Q65; elements of strength, 
265; choice of locale in rela- 
tion to fatalistic attitude, 
266; presentation of nature, 
Q66, 268; humor and style, 
267; other distinctive quali- 
ties, 268; trend of teaching, 
269; portrayal of Wessex 



character, 271; enumeration 
and evaluation of greatest 
novels, 271; characterization 
of women, 275 ; tendency to- 
ward didacticism, 276; mas- 
ter of the short story, 277; 
last book, 278; poetic 
drama, 278; comparison 
with Matthew Arnold, 278; 
influence upon English 
novel, 279; Meredith com- 
pared with, 280; referred to, 
21, 152. 

Harry Richmond, see Adven- 
tures of Harry Richmond. 

Harte, Bret, founder of a 
genre, 314. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, on ro- 
manticism, 126; place in 
American romance, 324; at- 
mosphere of the past, 324; 
absorbing psychologic inter- 
est as illustrated in his 
works, 325; power, 328; 
tendency toward didacti- 
cism, 328; style, 328, 329; 
burlesque and humor, 329; 
changes in standards of dic- 
tion, 330. 

Heap, Uriah, suggested by 
Mr. Collins, in Pride and 
Prejudice, 113. 

Heart of Midlothian, by Scott, 
place among Waverley Nov- 
els, 134; essentially Scotch, 
135; plot, 135; typical of 
Scott's other romances, 140; 
also, 128; see also, Waverley 
Novels. 

Heine, Heinrich, referred to, 
67. 

Henley, William Ernest, 
quoted, 76, 81, 177. 

Henrietta Temple, by Disraeli, 
246. 

Henry Esmond, by Thackeray, 



INDEX 



S4a 



merits, 204; demerits, 205; 
plot, 206; also, 125. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, com- 
pared with Smollett, 74; 
also, 8. 

House and Brain, by Bulwer, 
249. 

House of Mirth, The, by 
Wharton, 21. 

House of Seven Gables, by 
Hawthorne, psychological 
analysis of character, 325; 
sympathetic background, 
326; theme and plot, 326; 
also, 126. 

Howells, William Dean, 
growth of truth in literature 
shown by his dialogue as 
compared with that of 
earlier novelists, 13; criti- 
cism of Clarissa Harlowe, 
38; his opinion of Austen, 
175; influence on English 
realism, 313; tendency to- 
ward didacticism, 277; 
quoted or referred to, 8, 
54, 122, 215, 238, 257. 

Huckleberry Finn, by Mark 
Twain, 315. 

Hudson River idyls, see Irv- 
ing. 

Hugo, Victor, effect of 
crowded existence in, 66; 
dramatic power, 188; re- 
ferred to, 190. 

Human Comedy, by Balzac, 
early studies for, 152; place 
and purpose, 154; impres- 
siveness, 155 ; historical 
period covered, 155; age of 
author, 156 ; encyclopedic 
survey of all classes, 156, 
158; extent and partial ful- 
filment of definite plan, 156, 
157; divided into three 
groups and contents of each. 



158; impossible to classify, 
159; various types cited, 160, 
164; comparison with Eng- 
lish contemporaries, 161, 
163; see also, individual 
titles. 

Humphrey Clinker, see Expe- 
dition of Humphrey 
Clinker. 

Hypatia, by Charles Kingsley, 
249. 

Ibsen, Henrik, referred to, 
190, 320. 

Idealism, Modern, and read- 
justment of religious 
thought, 264. 

Idyls of the King, by Tenny- 
son, 143. 

Improvisatori, Scott and Du- 
mas natural, 129. 

Indian, The, portrayal of, by 
Cooper, 319. 

Irish types, first portrayed by 
Edgeworth, 100. 

Irving, Washington, preceded 
Dickens in use of Christmas 
motive, 191 ; master of short 
story, 314; Legend of 
Sleepy Hollow, 316; pri- 
marily an essayist, 316; ex- 
ample of intercalation of 
essay and fiction, 317; serv- 
ice to later writers, 317; in- 
stinct for truth, 318; re- 
ferred to, 200. 

Island Night's Entertainment, 
The, by Stevenson, 303. 

Italy, death of Smollett in, 
74; struggle for unity de- 
picted in Vittoria, 293. 

Ivanhoe, by Scott, 128; see 
also, Waverley Novels. 

Jack Wilton, 4. 
Jamaica, Life in, first pictured 
in Roderick Random, 76. 



344 



INDEX 



James, George Payne Rains- 
ford, referred to, 330. 

James, Henry, influence on 
English realism, 313; devo- 
tion to British types, 313; 
earlier work more represen- 
tative, 314; referred to, 11, 
60, 152. 

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte 
Bronte, 259. 

Janet's Repentance, see Scenes 
from Clerical Life. 

Jeffrey, Francis, Lord, re- 
ferred to, 39. 

Jew, The, in fiction, 240; see 
also, Daniel Deronda. 

Joan of Arc, by Mark Twain, 
315. 

John Inglesant, by Short- 
house, 249. 

Johnson, Doctor Samuel, his 
characterization of Fielding 
and Richardson, 51; sells 
manuscript of Vicar of 
Wakefield, 93; publication 
of Rasselas, 94; quoted, 67. 

Jonson, Ben, referred to, 113. 

Journalism, preparation for 
novel writing, 176, 177; fol- 
lowed by Thackeray, 203. 

Journalism, Modern, genesis 
of, 7. 

Jude the Obscure, by Hardy, 
comparison with earlier 
work, 271 ; disproportioned 
view of life, 273; reception 
by critics, 274; also, 265, 
276, 277. 

Juvenal, referred to, 213. 

Kenelm Chillingly, by Bulwer, 

249. 
Kenilworth, by Scott, 128; see 

also, Waverley Novels. 
Kidnapped, by Stevenson, 301 ; 

see also, David Balfour. 



King Horn, 3. 

Kingsley, Charles, Austen 
compared with, 122; chrono- 
logic setting, 244; leader in 
church and state, 245; 
Christianity dominant spirit, 
249; first to feel rise of 
social democracy, 249; re- 
ferred to, 176, 236. 

Kingsley, Henry (brother of 
Charles Kingsley), stories of 
Australian life, 250. 

Kipling, Rudyard, growth of 
truth in literature shown by 
his dialogue as compared 
with that of earlier novel- 
ists, 13; psychology of ani- 
mals, 17; Stevenson com- 
pared with, 309 ; referred to, 
11. 

La Calpren&de, referred to, 
11. 

La Fayette, Madame de, re- 
ferred to, 12. 

Lamb, Charles, likeness to 
Sterne, 86; referred to, 211, 
323. 

Lang, Andrew, quoted, 177. 

Lanier, Sidney, development 
of novel and idea of per* 
sonality, 9; quoted in refer- 
ence to Pamela, 29. 

Laodicean, The, by Hardy, 
271. 

Last Days of Pompeii, by 
Bulwer, 248. 

Lay of the Last Minstrel, by 
Scott, 123. 

Leather Stocking series, by 
Cooper, 318; see also, indi- 
vidual titles. 

Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by 
Irving, 316. 

Le Sage, Alain Ren^, referred 
to, 12. 



INDEX 



34>5 



Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 
quoted, 122. 

Life, Sense of complexity of, 
found in Dickens and 
others, 190. 

Life's Little Ironies, by 
Hardy, 277. 

Ligeia, by Poe, 322. 

Lilliputian land, see Gulliver's 
Travels. 

Lisbon, Death of Fielding in, 
67, 69. 

Literarv ideals. Changing, 
1850-'00, effect on popu- 
larity of Thackeray and 
Dickens, 198. 

Literary professionalism, eigh- 
teenth century attitude to- 
ward, 19. 

Literature, English, History 
of, changed by Richardson, 
34. 

Little Dorrit, by Dickens, 182, 
186. 

Lockhart, John Gibson, re- 
ferred to, 123. 

Lodging for a Night, by Ster- 
enson, 303; also, 277. 

London, Jack, and psychology 
of animals, 17. 

Lord Ormont and his Aminta, 
by Meredith, comparison 
with earlier work, 280; view 
of marriage bond, 292. 

Lorna Doone, by Blackmore, 
249. 

Lost Illusions, by Balzac, 164; 
see also, Human Comedy. 

Lothair, by Disraeli, lack of 
seriousness and truth, 247; 
criticized by Agnes Rep- 
plier, 247; also, 246. 

Love passion, Handling of, a 
test, 61. 

Lyly, John, referred to, 4, 11, 
258. 



Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 
referred to, 39, 111, 200, 250. 

Mackenzie, Henry, referred 
to, 30, 94. 

Madame Bovary, by Flaubert, 
early example of pathologic 
novel, 172; plot, 173; con- 
trasted with Resurrection, 
192; also, 140. 

Maeterlinck, Maurice, referred 
to, 96. 

Magic Skin, by Balzac, 165; 
see also. Human Comedy. 

Man of Feeling, by Mackenzie, 
30, 94. 

Mansfield Park, by Austen, 
103, 108, 110, 112, 115. 

Marble Faun, The, by Haw- 
thorne, 325. 

Marryat, Frederick, referred 
to, 77. 

Marshalsea (prison in Lon- 
don), Father of the, John 
Dickens original of, 176. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, by Dick- 
ens, represents author's 
young prime, 181 ; a master- 
piece, 186; power in depict- 
ing complexity of life, 189; 
also, 182. 

Marvel, Ik, quoted, 39. 

Master of Ballantrae, by 
Stevenson, psychologic ro- 
mance, 301; plot a frame- 
work for character drawing, 
303 ; vivid impressions, 
306. 

Matthews, Brander, and the 
short-story, 316. 

Maupassant, Guy de. Hardy 
compared with, 276; re- 
ferred to, 151, 172. 

Mausoleum of Julia, anon., 19. 

Mayor of Casterbridge, by 
Hardy, 271, 276. 

Meliorist, George Eliot, a, 242. 



346 



INDEX 



Melodrama, Reade master of, 
251. 

Melville, Herman, referred to, 
77. 

Memoirs Supposed to be Writ- 
ten by a Lady of Quality, 
by Smollett, 79. 

Meredith, George, description 
of comedy, 111; Austen 
compared with, 115; also 
mature work of Bulwer, 
248 ; refuses classification, 
265y 279; Hardy compared 
with, 265, 267; position as 
novelist and growth of novel 
during his time, 280; in- 
fluenced by surrounding 
conditions, 281; noble type 
of women, 281; early per- 
sonal history, 282; retire- 
ment at Boxhill and Presi- 
dent of British Society of 
Authors, 282; philosophy of 
life as seen in his books, 
282, 284 ; intellectual appeal, 
282, 285, 293; comparison 
with James, Fielding, and 
Smollett, 283; use of plot, 
episode, love, etc., 283; 
characterization and evalua- 
tion of greatest books, 285; 
favorite task, 287; great tri- 
umph in portrayal of Roy 
Richmond, 288; American 
readers, 290; view of mental 
relation of sexes in Diana 
of the Crossways, 290; 
enemy of sentimentalism, 
291; view of marriage, 292; 
originality in allying ro- 
mance and intellect, 292; 
love of Italy and compari- 
son with Browning, 293; 
distinction as novelist and 
thinker, 293; mannerisms of 
style, 294; causes of obscur- 



ity, 296; and other defects, 
297; personality, influence, 
and aim, 297; Stevenson in- 
fluenced by, 305; and com- 
pared with, 311; Hawthorne 
compared with, 325; re- 
ferred to, 141, 152, 211, 240. 

"Meredith of Poetry, The," 
Browning called, 293. 

Middle Ages, cultivation of 
prose romance during, 3; a 
view of, 143. 

Middlemarch, by George Eliot, 
published serially, 1811-12, 
and price paid, 237; con- 
ceived as two separate parts, 
237; theme, 237, 239; lack 
of plot, 238; product of 
author's brain rather than 
blood, 238; character draw- 
ing, 239; also, 221. 

Mill on the Floss, by George 
Eliot, written under stimu- 
lus of popularity, 230; its 
strength, 231; also, 222, 
281. 

Miniature painting, Austen's 
writing likened to, 105. 

Mister OilfiVs Love Story, see 
Scenes from Clerical Life. 

Mister Jonathan Wild the 
Great, by Fielding, 56, 57. 

Modern Love, sonnet-sequence, 
by Meredith, 281. 

Mohawk Valley, 319. 

Moli^re, Jean Baptiste Poque- 
lin, his comedy likened to 
that of Austen, 111; also, 
60. 

Moll Flanders, by Defoe, 47. 

Monastery, The, by Scott, 128; 
see also, Waverley Novels. 

Monk, The, by Lewis, 96. 

Montaigne, Michel, referred 
to, 308. 

Montagu, Lady Mary (Wort- 



INDEX 



34>7 



ley), quoted, 15, 24, 29, 41, 
42, 55. 

Moonstone, The, by Collins, 
260. 

Moore, George, Jude the Ob- 
scure compared with early 
work of, 265. 

Morris, William, home at 
Hammersmith, 26. 

Morte d' Arthur, 4. 

My Novel, by Bulwer, 248. 

Mysteries of Udolpho, by 
RadclifFe, satirized in 
Northanger Abbey, 107. 

Mystery and horror, Ro- 
mances of, 96. 

Mystery of Edwin Drood, by 
Dickens, 185. 

Nainne, by Voltaire, 30. 

Nana, by Zola, 264. 

Naturalism, out-growth of 
realism, 262. 

Nature, salutary influence of, 
51 ; use of its power by 
Hardy, 266, 268. 

Navy-life, drawn by Smollett, 
74, 76. 

Neo-idealism, 280. 

New Arabian Nights, by Stev- 
enson, 302, 303. 

New England life. Stories of, 
first written by Mrs. Stowe, 
315. 

Newcomes, The, by Thackeray, 
merits and demerits, 204, 
205; strength of character 
drawings, and organic 
structure, 207; also, 203. 

Newspapers, see Journalism. 

Nicholas Nickleby, by Dick- 
ens, 180, 181. 

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 
Meredith compared with, 
284; referred to, 190. 

Nineteentii century, uncertain 



state of English fiction at 
beginning, 150; ascendency 
of realism, 150; romanticism 
revived by Stevenson, 151; 
wide-spread influence of 
Balzac, 154, 171; and efi'ect 
of greater truth introduced 
by him, 167; Thackeray a 
voice of the later, 196; 
George Eliot's grave outlook 
expression of a mode of the 
late, 223; religious thought* 
in relation to modern real- 
ism, 263; contribution of 
Poe to fiction of, 321. 

Nomenclature, Confusion in, 
5, 12. 

Norris, Frank, unfinished tril- 
ogy, 316. 

Northanger Abbey, by Austen, 
satire on Mysteries of 
Udolpho, 107; power in 
idiomatic English, 120; also, 
103. 

Novel, development, 4; defini- 
tion and early use of word, 
5, 9; severance between ro- 
mance of heroism and study 
of contemporary society, 5, 
10; relation to essay, 8; 
treatment of personality, 9 ; 
note of appeal in modern, 
10; widening conception of 
truth, 13; novel-writing 
risen to fine art, 18; woman 
a unifying principle in its 
evolution, 21, 22; principles 
of growth, 22; first analyt- 
ical, 25; popularity, 1742- 
'85, 34; maturing and mul- 
tiplying, 72; growth in 
nineteenth century, ^3 ; 
characteristics of, as dis- 
tinguished from romance, 
124; trend of, in Scott's 
time, 124. 



348 



INDEX 



Novel, Modern, sources of 
power, 17; psychologic and 
serious, 53; one characteris- 
tic of, 65; accepted length, 
92. 

Novel of eighteenth century, 
contrasted with that of to- 
day, 31, 35; its writing an 
aside, 57. 

Novel versus romance at be- 
ginning of nineteenth cen- 
tury, 150, 

Nuneaton, Warwickshire, early 
home of George Eliot, 220. 

Objective method, in Fielding, 
70. 

(Edipus Tyr annus, Coleridge's 
opinion of plot, 59. 

Old Curiosity Shop, by Dick- 
ens, 181, 185. 

Old Mortality, by Scott, 123, 
128; see also, Waverley Nov- 
els. 

Oliver Twist, by Dickens, 180, 
181. 

One of Our Conquerors, by 
Meredith, comparison with 
earlier works, 280; view of 
marriage, 292 ; mannerisms 
of style, 294. 

Ordeal of Richard Feveril, by 
Meredith, comparison with 
later works, 280; plot, char- 
acterization, and evaluation, 
285, 287; also, 284. 

Our Mutual Friend, by Dick- 
ens, 186. 

Pair of Blue Eyes, by Hardy, 
270. 

Pamela, by Richardson, publi- 
cation, 5; democratic note, 
15; early study of woman, 
21; first novel of analysis, 
25; form and plot, 25, 26, 



28; compared with modern 
fiction, 27; French dramatic 
version, 30; same motive 
used by Voltaire in Nainne, 
30; sentimentality, 30; suc- 
cess, 33; influence upon 
Fielding, 48; caricature, in, 
48; chronologic setting, 73, 
87; also, 72, 161. 

Paradox of literature. Ama- 
teur writing a, 104. 

Paris, Artist life in, depicted 
by Balzac, 164. 

Parliamentary series, by Trol- 
lope, 256. 

Passion in the Desert, by Bal- 
zac, 157; see also, Human 
Comedy. 

Patron, Freedom from the, 
one result of democratic 
note, 30. 

Pavilion on the Links, by 
Stevenson, 306. 

Peacock, Thomas Love, re- 
ferred to, 282. 

Pe(f Woffington, by Reade, 
251. 

Pendennis, by Thackeray, mer- 
its and demerits, 204, 205; 
strength of character draw- 
ing and organic structure, 
207; also, 204, 219. 

Pere Goriot, by Balzac, com- 
parison with Dickens as to 
difference between Anglo- 
Saxon and Celtic genius, 
162; also, 160, 166, 168, 
170; see also. Human Com- 
edy. 

Peregrine Pickle, see Adven- 
tures of Peregrine Pickle. 

Personality, development of 
interest in, 6, 9. 

Persuasion, by Austen, 103, 
108. 

Petit Chose, Le, by Daudet, 



INDEX 



349 



Tess of the d'Urberville<s 
compared with, 273. 

Phillpotts, Eden, influence of 
Hardy upon, 266. 

Pickwick Papers, by Dickens, 
effect of Smollett upon, 83; 
original plan, 178; method, 
purpose, and definition, 179; 
typical of later work, 179; 
diversity of judgment con- 
cerning, 182; also, 150, 177, 
178. 

Pilot, The, by Cooper, 320. 

Poe, Edgar Allan, master of 
short story, 314, 316; con- 
tribution to nineteenth cen- 
tury fiction, 321 ; unsur- 
passed specimens of ro- 
mance, 322; importance to 
poetry, 322; comparison 
with Hawthorne and others, 
322. 

Poetic drama, essayed by 
Hardy, 268, 277. 

Pope, Alexander, quoted, 32. 

Positivism, exemplified in 
George Eliot's mature life, 
222. 

Pre-Raphaelite, Austen a lit- 
erary, 105. 

Pride and Prejudice, by Aus- 
ten, place in order of pub- 
lication, 103; rank and plot, 
107; character studies, 109, 
110; power in idiomatic 
English, 120; also, 123. 

Primrose, Dr., comparison 
with Country Doctor by 
Balzac, 90; see also, Vicar 
of Wakefield. 

Priory, The, London, later 
home of George Eliot, 
222. 

Problem novel, place in fiction, 
241. 

Professional life, idealization 



of, in Vicar of Wakefield, 
90. 

Prose romance, see Fiction. 

Psychic analysis in fiction in- 
troduced by Beyle, 152. 

Psj^chologic truth most mod- 
ern note of realism, 324. 

Psychology, in modern novel 
as contrasted with earlier, 
13; in Richardson, 50; sim- 
pler in Fielding, 51 ; in novel 
of to-day, 53; superficial in 
Scott, 130; in George Eliot, 
219, 229; of Stevenson com- 
pared with that of Scott, 
304; in James, 314; horror 
and mystery in Poe, 316; 
Ibsenian psychology of 
women, 320. 

Psychology, Animal, in mod- 
ern novels, 17. 

Puddin' Head Wilson, by 
Mark Twain, 315. 

Put Yourself in His Place, 
by Reade, 251. 

Quentin Durward, by Scott, 
128; see also, Waverley Nov- 
els. 

Quest of the Absolute, by Bal- 
zac, 166; see also. Human 
Comedy. 

Quilp, exaggeration of the 
comic, 185; see also, Carica- 
ture; Dickens. 

Rabelais, Francois, model for 

Sterne, 84. 
Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, referred 

to, 96, 98. 
Rapacinni's Daughter, by 

Hawthorne, 322. 
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, 

by Johnson, 94. 
Reade, Charles, chronologic 

setting, 244; personal char- 



350 



INDEX 



acteristics, 250; specific 
qualities as novelist, 251 ; at- 
titude toward socially unfit, 
251; referred to, 173, 
176. 

Realism, tendency toward, in 
early novelists, 12; defini- 
tion, 167; influenced by 
Scott and Austen, 175; and 
by Howells and James, 313; 
full pulse of, in George 
Eliot, 218; satiric study in 
My Novel, 248; in Trollope, 
257; Jane Eyre example of 
romanticism in age of, 259; 
passes to naturalism, 262; 
Influence of scientific 
thought upon, 263; reaction, 
264; logic of modern, 265; 
current purified by Steven- 
son, 299; lesson to romanti- 
cism, 308; psychologic truth 
most modern note, 324; see 
also, 280. 

Bed Gauntlet, by Scott, 128; 
see also, Waverley Novels. 

Regicide, The, by Smollett, 79. 

Religious thought during late 
nineteenth century, Read- 
justment of, 263. 

Repplier, Agnes, criticism of 
Lothair, 247. 

Resurrection, by Tolstoy, con- 
trasted with Madame Bo- 
vary, 192. 

Return of the Native, by 
Hardy, influence of its set- 
ting, 268 ; representative 
work of author, 271 ; no defi- 
nite theme, 276. 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, referred 
to, 89. 

Rhoda Fleming, by Meredith, 
Stevenson's opinion of, 289; 
seduction melodrama, 293; 
also. 283, 284. 



Richard Feveril, see Ordeal of 
Richard Feveril. 

Richardson, Samuel, leisureli- 
ness of movement in his nov- 
els, 11; copied by Rousseau, 
12; influence on fiction, 18; 
attitude of Walpole toward, 
19; founder of the modern 
novel, 23, 34; democratic 
sympathies, 23; life in Lon- 
don, 24, 26; production of 
Pamela, 25; consequent 
prosperity, 26; results in his 
social life, 32; Clarissa Har- 
lowe published, 35; criti- 
cized by Valdes, 36; Sir 
Charles Orandison pub- 
lished, 39; contrasted with 
Fielding and influence upon, 
36, 43, 45, 48, 52, 53; au- 
thority and characteristics 
of work, 43; affinity with 
latter day realists, 44; social 
instinct his foundation, 45; 
comparison with Defoe and 
Swift, 45; marks beginning 
of modern form, 46; psy- 
chology paramount, 47; 
opinion of Dr. Johnson, 51; 
place among later writers, 
71 ; popularity shown in imi- 
tation, 72; compared with 
Smollett, 83; and with Aus- 
ten, 102; referred to, 151, 
154, 211, 225, 247. 

Ring and the Book, The, by 
Browning, 156. 

Rob Roy, by Scott, 146; see 
also, Waverley Novels. 

Robert Elsmere, by Ward, 
236. 

Robinson Crusoe, by Defoe, 
priority as to realism, 45; 
chronologic setting, 87; also, 
4, 25, 50. 

Roderick Random, see Ad- 



INDEX 



351 



ventures of Roderick Ran- 
dom. 

Romance, aristocratic appeal 
in older, 10; bases of appeal 
in early, 10; contrasted with 
realism, 12; love of, fostered 
by Swift and others, 88; 
exemplified in Vicar of 
Wakefield, 89; characteris- 
tics of, as distinguished 
from novel, 124; influence 
of Scott on, 175; allied with 
intellect by Meredith, 292; 
contributions toward by 
American writers, 316; 
dominant form in England, 
318; reaction from extremes 
of realism, 330; see also, 
Scott, Stevenson. 

Romantic, Balzac an incura- 
ble, 168. 

Romanticism, Modern, and re- 
adjustment of religious 
thought, 264. 

Romney, George, referred to, 
89. 

Romola, by George Eliot, his- 
torical setting, 233; typical 
of author's other work in 
psychological aspect, 233; 
impression on the reader, 
234; amount paid for, 234; 
professional rather than 
spontaneous, 235; also, 125, 
221. 

Rouge et Noir, Le, by Beyle, 
first novel of psychic analy- 
sis, 152; typical in dealing 
with love and tragedy, 153; 
plot, 153. 

Roughing It, by Mark Twain, 
315. 

Rougon-Macquart series, by 
Zola, 262. 

Roundabout Papers, by 
Thackeray, 203. 



Rousseau, Jean Jacques, re- 
ferred to, 9, 12, 39. 

Ruskin, John, quoted or re- 
ferred to, 105, 149. 

Russell, Clark, referred to, 
77. 

Ruth, Book of, as fiction, 3. 

Sad Fortunes of Rev. Amos 
Barton, see Scenes from 
Clerical Life. 

Saint Ives, by Stevenson, 301. 

Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augus- 
tin, quoted, 2. 

Salambo, by Flaubert, 172. 

Saldar, Countess de, in Evan 
Harrington, compared with 
Becky Sharp, 287. 

Salem, Mass., site of House 
of the Seven Gables, 326. 

Salisbury Cathedral, inspira- 
tion to Trollope, 256. 

Sandra Belloni, by Meredith, 
283, 291. 

Sanford and Merton, by Day, 
95. 

Scarlet Letter, The, by Haw- 
thorne, 325. 

Scenes from Clerical Life, by 
George Eliot, her first book, 
225; composed of three 
tales, their inequalities and 
general characterization, 226 ; 
Dickens' congratulations 

upon publication, 229. 

Scenes from Private Life, see 
Human Comedy. 

Scientific faith, Rapid move- 
ment of thought toward, 
1830-'60, 196. 

Scientific thought. Influence 
of, upon literature, 263. 

Scott, Sir Walter, attitude to- 
ward literary professional- 
ism, 20; his criticism of 
Austen, 102; early work 



352 



INDEX 



anonjTuous, 123; qualities of 
life related to work, 123; 
contribution to modern fic- 
tion, 124; as a romanticist 
and novelist, 125; novels 
separated into two groups, 
128; quality of work af- 
fected by burdens of later 
years, 128; successful effort 
to cancel debts, 129; quali- 
ties as a raconteur, 129; de- 
scription by a contempo- 
rary, 130; style, 130; Tory 
limitations, 130; place of ro- 
mances in literature, 131; 
comparison with contempo- 
raries and lines of greatest 
success, 131 ; historical 
range of romances, 140; 
plots varied, motives few, 
140; interpretation of hu- 
manity, 140 ; comparison 
with modern masters, 141; 
character drawn from with- 
out not by analysis, 141; 
" feudal mind," 141 ; vivid 
drawing of picturesque 
characters, 141; center of 
interest, 141 ; personal 
tastes and conception of 
mission of fiction, 142 ; tech- 
nical qualifications, 143 ; 
largeness of eff'ect as in 
comparison with Austen, 
143; more interested in 
character than in plot, 144; 
range of characters excelled 
only by Dickens, 144; defi- 
nite talent for stage setting 
of rovalty, 146; called 
"Wizard of the North," 
146; particularly strong in 
environment, 146 ; present- 
day criticism, 147; style, 
148; emphasis laid on heroic 
aspects of life, 149; death 



in 1832, 150; influence on 
realism, 175; dramatic 
power, 188; Stevenson com- 
pared with, 304, 308; re- 
ferred to, 164, 318, 321. 
Selborne, England, 102. 
Sense and sensibility, by Aus- 
ten, plot, 107; first draught 
epistolary in form, 109; 
also, 103. 

" Sensibility," 30 ; see also, 
Sentimentality. 

Sentimental Journey, by 
Sterne, 85. 

Sentimentality, as shown in 
Pamela and Nicholas Nic- 
kleby, 30, 31; reaction in 
modern times, 31; fiercely 
satirized in Sandra Belloni, 
291. 

Seraphita, by Balzac, 165; see 
also, Human Comedy. 

Sevigne, Madame de, visits 
Austen, 19. 

Sexual relations, Novels of, 
172. 

Shakspere, William, person- 
ality merged in characters, 
75; referred to, 4, 59, 138, 
156, 289. 

Shaving of Shagpat, by Mere- 
ditli, 281. 

Shaw, Bernard, quoted, 14. 

Short stories, by Hardy, 277; 
see also, Hawthorne, 
Poe. 

Short story. Cultivation of, in 
America, 316. 

Shorthouse, Joseph Henry, re- 
ferred to, 249. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, quoted, 
133. 

Sienkiewicz, Henryk, referred 
to, 190. 

Silas Marner, by George Eliot, 
form and plot, 231; union 



INDEX 



S53 



of artistic and dramatic, 
231; its teaching, 232. 

Sir Charles Grandison, by 
Richardson, purpose, 39; 
comparison with author's 
other novels, 40; plot, 41; 
criticisms by Lady Montagu, 
41, 42; comparison with 
The Egoist, 290; also, 
247. 

Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, 
as character sketches, 7; 
their relation to the novel 
paralleled by Irving's work 
in essay and fiction, 317. 

Sketch Book, The, by Irving, 
317. 

Sketches by Boz, by Dickens, 
150, 178. 

Smith, Goldwin, biography of 
Austen, 113. 

Smollett, Tobias, Roderick 
Random published, 73; com- 
parison with contempo- 
raries, 73, 83 ; and with mod- 
ern writers, 74, 83; career 
in England and death in 
Italy, 74, 81; follows Gil 
Bias as model and translates 
it, 74; contrasted with 
Shakspere and Balzac, 75; 
lines of interest in his work, 
76; genius for characteriza- 
tion, 77; style, 78; publica- 
tion of best known novels, 
79, 80, 81; Meredith com- 
pared with, 283. 

Snoio Image, The, by Haw- 
thorne, 322, 324. 

Social democracy, first felt by 
Charles Kingsley, 249. 

Spain, Cultivation of prose ro- 
mance in, 4. 

Spectator, The, social in- 
fluence, 6; contributory to 
development of novel, 7; 



see also, Sir Roger de Cover- 
ley Papers. 

Spenser, Edmund, referred to, 
3, 156. 

Spy, The, by Cooper, 320. 

Steele, Sir Richard, and gene- 
sis of modern journalism, 
7; also, 5. 

Stendahl, pseud., see Beyle, 
Henri. 

Stephen, Sir Leslie, quoted, 37. 

Sterne, Lawrence, birth and 
growth of novel, 34; com- 
parison with contempo- 
raries, 83, 85; essayist rather 
than novelist, 85, 86; like- 
ness to Lamb, 86. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 
growth of truth in literature 
shown by his dialogue as 
compared with that of ear- 
lier novelists, 13; share in 
revival of romance, 151; 
Hardy compared with, 280; 
his opinion of Meredith, 
289; double role of essayist 
and novelist, 299; historical 
service to English fiction, 
299; death at Vailima, 299; 
personal and literary 
charms, 299; qualities of 
early work, 300; and of 
later, 301; psychologic ro- 
mance of Scotch novels best 
expression of genius, 301, 
303; interest in character 
study, 302; masterpieces of 
foreign setting, 303; com- 
parison with Scott, 304; 
technical skill, 304; style in 
essay and fiction, 305; in- 
fluenced by Meredith, 305; 
power of representing and 
envisaging character illus- 
trated, 305; refutation of 
charge of imitation, 306; in- 



354 



INDEX 



creasing power in drawing 
women and comparison with 
those of Scott and Thack- 
eray, 307; witness to reality 
and truth in romance, 308; 
human sympathy, 309; qual- 
ities of style, 309; essays 
complement of fiction, 311; 
philosophy of life and re- 
ligious attitude, 311; legacy 
to literature, 312; quoted or 
referred to, SO, 120, 131,211, 
232, 277, 289, 322. 

Steventon, England, home of 
Austen, 102. 

Story-telling, its antiquity, 1, 
3; three ways of, 2. 

Stout Gentleman, The, by 
Irving, 317. 

Stowe, Mrs. Harriet (Beech- 
er), started line of studies 
of New England rustic life, 
315. 

Stuarts, The, 140. 

Swift, Jonathan, Richardson 
compared with, 40; chrono- 
logic setting, 87; Stevenson 
compared with, 309; also, 
57. 

Sybil, by Disraeli, 245. 

Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe, 
conception of environment 
as shaping power, 268; 
quoted, 8, 41, 58, 141, 214. 

Tale of Two Cities, by Dick- 
ens, evaluation, 186; dra- 
matic study of French Rev- 
olution, 187; conditions un- 
der which it was written, 
187; lack of humor, 187; 
also, 125, 183. 

Tales of My Landlord, by 
Scott, 128; see also, Waver- 
ley Novels. 

Tancred, by Disraeli, 245. 



Tarascon, 288. 

"Teacup Times," 6. 

Temple Bar, London, Rich- 
ardson's shop beyond, 25. 

Tender Husband, by Steele, 5. 

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 
quoted or referred to, 53, 
143, 200, 282. 

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, by 
Hardy, comparison with 
earlier work, 271; fatalistic 
teaching and faulty conclu- 
sion, 272; comparison with 
Le Petit Chose, 273; also, 
21, 267, 276. 

Testing of Diana Mallory, by 
Ward, 21. 

Thackeray, William Make- 
peace, master of colloquial 
manner, 52; criticism of 
Fielding, 70; opinion of 
Dickens' Christmas Stories, 
191; lovers of, mutually ex- 
clusive toward Dickens, 195; 
comparison with Dickens, 
196, 199, 205, 208, 216; 
voice of late nineteenth cen- 
tury, 196; modern note in, 
196; tests of his art and 
message, 197; fluctuations in 
popularity and their cause, 
198; cynicism a mooted 
point, 200, 202, 203; per- 
sonal qualities, 200, 202; 
circumstances of early life, 
201 ; satirist of contempo- 
rary social faults, 201, 207, 
213; work as essayist and 
journalist, 202, 203; point 
of view, 208; careless tech- 
nique, 209; dramatic sense, 
210; style, 211; satire, 212, 
213, 216; portrayal of wom- 
en, 215; attitude toward fic- 
tion, 216; comparison with 
George Eliot, 218; failure 



INDEX 



355 



to depict life with faithful 
frankness, 219; Trollope 
compared with, 253; and in- 
fluence upon, 258; attitude 
of Charlotte Bronte toward, 
259 ; Stevenson compared 
with, 308, 311; quoted or re- 
ferred to, 60, 143, 151, 173, 
176, 214, 220, 233, 237, 238, 
261, 287, 290. 

Theater, The, in the eighteenth 
century, social influence, 8; 
greater degree of truth de- 
manded, 14; see also, Drama. 

Three Strangers, The, by- 
Hardy, 277. 

Title page of the past, 27. 

Tolbooth, The, Edinburgh, 
Heart of Midlothian, story 
of, 135. 

Tolstoy, Leo, tendency to di- 
dacticism, 277; referred to, 
156, 190. 

Tom Jones, A Foundling, by 
Fielding, his best known 
work, 57; plot, 58; Coler- 
idge's criticism of, 59; bio- 
graphical, 59; strength and 
limitations, 59, 61, 64; loose 
construction, Q5\ subsidiary 
characters, 66; reception 
abroad, 67; chronologic set- 
ting, 73. 

Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, 
315. 

Tragedy in modern literature, 
pure example of in Hardy's 
nature stories, 266. 

Treasure Island, by Stevenson, 
early objective teaching, 
300; return to romance wel- 
comed, 302; portrayal of 
John Silver, 305; psycho- 
logic attitude, 311; also, 
306. 

Trilby, by Du Maurier, 21. 



Tristram Shandy, by Sterne, 
influence on eighteenth-cen- 
tury novel, 84; essay rather 
than novel, 85; eight years 
in publication, 86. 

Trollope, Anthony, chrono- 
logic setting, 244; criticized 
by Disraeli, 247; influence 
and power to-day, 252, 258; 
consummate master of the 
commonplace, 252 ; Austen 
compared with, 253; quali- 
ties as writer, 253; scope, 
systemj and method of plan, 
254; technique, 255; volum- 
inousness, 255; inherited ca- 
pacity for writing, 256; 
works divided into two ser- 
ies, 256; realism and style, 
257; pioneer in local fiction, 
257; influenced by Thack- 
eray, 258; satirizes Dickens' 
habit of exaggeration, 258; 
quoted or referred to, 
106, 122, 175, 208, 247, 
261. 
Twain, Mark, referred to, 315. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Stowe, 

315. 
Under the Greenwood Tree, 

by Hardy, 265, 270. 

Vailima, Island of Samoa, 
home of Stevenson, 299. 

Valdes, Juan, Richardson 
criticized by, 36. 

Vanity Fair, by Thackeray, 
comparison with David Cop- 
per field, 182; merits and de- 
merits, 204, 205; loose con- 
struction, 206, 209; reasons 
for supremacy, 207; com- 
pared with Middlemarch, 
237; also, 218. 

Vathek, by Beck ford, 96. 



S56 



INDEX 



Venetia, by Disraeli, 246. 

Vicar of Wakefield, by Gold- 
smith, influence in eigh- 
teenth century novel, 84; 
publication, 89 ; plot, charm, 
and power, 89; contrasted 
with realism of Clarissa 
Harlowe, 92; praised by 
Goethe, 93; manuscript sold 
by Dr. Johnson, 93; also, 
72. 

Villette, by Charlotte Bronte, 
259. 

Virginians, The, by Thack- 
eray, 204. 

Vittoria, by Meredith, Italian 
struggle for unity, 293; 
also, 283. 

Voltaire, Francois Marie 
Arouet de, visits Congreve, 
19; motive of Pamela used 
in Nainne, 30. 

Walpole, Horace, depreciation 
of professional writers, 19; 
Castle of Otranto, 96; 
quoted, 82. 

War, Balzac's power of en- 
visaging, 163, 164. 

Ward, Mrs. Mary Augusta 
(Arnold), tendency to di- 
dacticism, 277; referred to, 
21, 236. 

Warden, The, by TroUope, 
254. 

Warner, Charles Dudley, 
quoted, 194. 

Water Babies, by Charles 
Kingsley, 249. 

Waverley Novels, by Scott, 
typical of author's method 
and charm, 132; character- 
ization of plot, 132, 134; re- 
sult of unconscious prepara- 
tion, 133; see also individual 
titles. 



Wessex, background of 
Hardy's novels, 256, 265, 
270, 275. 

Westminster Abbey, Dickens 
buried in, 197. 

Westward Ho!, by Charles 
Kingsley, 249. 

Weir of Hermiston, by Stev- 
enson, psychologic romance, 
301; contrasted types of 
women, 307. 

Wharton, Mrs. Edith (Jones), 
referred to, 21. 

White, Gilbert, referred to, 
103. 

Whitman, Walt, referred to, 
239. 

Wieland, by Brown, 96. 

Wiltshire, England, Life in, 
depicted by Trollope, 256. 

" Wizard of the North," Scott 
called, 146. 

Woman, influence in molding 
novel, 20, 22; popularity as 
writer in eighteenth cen- 
tury, 98; portrayal by 
Thackeray, 215; type drawn 
by Meredith, 281; disserta- 
tion on mutual relation of 
sexes in Diana of the Cross- 
ways, 290; drawn by Steven- 
son and compared with 
those of Scott and Thack- 
eray, 307, 308. 

Woman of Thirty, by Balzac, 
quick of psychological ex- 
posure reached in, 162; com- 
pared with The Egoist, 163. 

Woodlanders, The, by Hardy, 
268. 

Wordsworth, William, re- 
ferred to, 156. 
Wrecker, The, by Stevenson, 

300, 301. 
Wuthering Heights, by Emily 
Bronte, 259. 



INDEX 



357 



Yankee at the Court of King 
Arthur, by Mark Twain, 
315. 

Yellowplush Papers, by 
Thackeray, 203. 

Zola, Emile, high-priest of 
naturalist school, 152; king 
among modern realists, 167; 
inheritance from preceding 
writers, 173; influence upon 
English fiction, 174; his real- 



ism contrasted with that of 
Dickens, 184; criticized by 
Anatole France, 193; theory 
and practice in fiction, 262; 
influence of scientific thought 
upon, 263; distinction of his 
work and its historical in- 
terest, 264; conception of 
environment as shaping 
power, 268; quoted or re- 
ferred to, 151, 152, 163, 
165. 



3U.T7-1 



